We live in an era when the poetic act—in America, at least—is increasingly performed on assignment and negotiated in committee under the auspices of a bureaucracy. I am speaking, of course, of that unique contemporary phenomenon known as the university creative writing program. A bizarre institution, it has, in the manner of a black hole, grown more ominous and powerful with every poet, big and small, that it has swallowed up. It is a venue in which poetry is viewed, above all, as a career—a venue in which, all too frequently, the quality of the verse that a contemporary poet has written seems a far less reliable index of his relative importance than the grants and fellowships he has received, the writing colonies he has attended, the universities at which he has studied, taught, or given readings, and the number of books he has published. A poem is, after all, a fragile thing, and its intrinsic worth, or lack thereof, is a frighteningly subjective consideration; but fellowships, grants, degrees, appointments, and publication credits are objective facts. They are quantifiable; they can be listed on a resume. Like any bureaucracy, the university creative writing program tends to be more comfortable with these kinds of concrete attainments than with artistic accomplishments whose actual value, if any, cannot be determined without the strenuous exercise of intelligent critical judgment.

Which brings us to Dave Smith, a poet highly respected in the world of the creative writing program. He might be described, indeed,