Richard Poirier

He was the most popular American poet of the century, and his popularity has become a kind of embarrassment to those who would recognize his greatness.

At the moment he’s Melville without Moby Dick, Twain without Huckleberry Finn, but out of his battle with himself may come the book that puts him in the company of the greatest writers in American history.

The war is a real one, though many of the elders who wage it will not acknowledge it. Campus after campus blows. The "hot minority" of the disenchanted grows, in number and in anger. In this article, the distinguished author (A World Elsewhere), editor (Partisan Review) and professor of English (Rutgers) Richard Poirier warns that by repressing the rebellion of youth instead of understanding, we are in danger of losing the best of our natural resources—"youth in its best and truest form, of rebellion and hope."