This brilliant new book powerfully demonstrates how the evolution of Modern and Post-Modern criticism and theory, free verse, and political ideology have greatly diminished contemporary poetry. The final chapter is a tour de force that compellingly argues for meter as the catalyst that joins syllables, accents, and (often) rhyme to create the deeply subtle artistry of our language's poetry. "What is poetry and what is poetry for? To ask the first question is to ask the second. To answer both in light of the western tradition stretching back to Homer, and against much modernist and postmodernist poetic theory and practice, is the goal of this remarkable book. Poetry's final end is nothing less than to arouse in us a profound sense of wonder in coming to know that 'Reality as a whole is formed as the good-world-order, the intelligible beauty showing forth from [the] cosmic circle of procession and return.'"-David Middleton, author of The Fiddler of Driskill Hill, in The American Conservative