This volume gathers twenty-four essays by the English critic Kenneth Cox (1916–2005) on various writers, including James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Basil Bunting, Louis Zukofsky, and Lorine Niedecker. In each case, Cox's exposition proves rigorous, idiosyncratic, drily passionate, and full of keen insights. Always, he proceeds with an "emphasis on literature as the art of language."/>/>Sample Poem:/>/>"As pure writing—literature, if you will—his essays deserve to be read and reread as one would those of William Hazlitt or Joseph Mitchell. They refresh and delight. They are a tonic for the mind and are best approached in the morning hours; one's entire day will be the better for it. Meanwhile, as proposition, explication, and argument of any given text, they are without equal."—August Kleinzahler, from his afterword