Imagination's Way

'Imagination's Way: Essays Critical and Personal' divides into three parts: the first, "The short of It," comprises five short pieces that altogether compose a synopsis of the second part, "And the Long," where the principal motifs--our people's story, the work of imagination, and the poem's making--interweave among the five critical essays. The third part, "And Mostly Personal," consists of five informal essays on the author's life and works. The author believes that Imagination's Way is a summation of his poetics so far from his own practice as poet, fictionist, critic, literary historian and anthologist. "Language makes real," he says, "but what is most imagined, with words and words, is what is most real." Further he says: "the poem's inmost seal is the poet's country. For one's country is what one's imagination owes its allegiance to." His deepest conviction as writer is the belief that a people's literature is their memory; their lies its chief value, for "a people is only as strong as their memory."