On burning ground : thirty years of thinking about poetry / Sandra M. Gilbert.

Why do we write: some thoughts on the coin that sings -- Of the living dead: the poet-critic in an age of theory -- Confessional mythology -- A ruthlessness of one's own -- Glass joints: a meditation on the line -- Mysteries of the hyphen: poetry, pasta, and identity politics -- Westward, off the map -- Staging grief: two elegies -- All about my mother (and me) -- The rediscovery of H.D -- Mephistopheles in Maine: rereading Lowell's "Skunk hour" -- Looking for Mr. Death: on Sexton's The death notebooks -- Of metaphors and morals: on three visions of Sylvia Plath -- Extraordinary words: on Ruth Stone's Ordinary words -- The lamentations of the new: on Louise Gluck's Vita nova -- The last wilderness of the wild old: on Marie Ponsot's The bird catcher and Rajzel Zychlinsky's God hid his face -- On the edge of the estate -- How these new homegirls sing -- The worst of the best; or, "Pessoa, Schmessoa" -- Where the boys are -- Common wealth.