"Western Wind" is an introduction to the elements of craft that make poetry sing, a superior anthology of classic and contemporary poetry, and a guide for students to poetics, writing about poetry, and critical theory. In this text, two well-respected poets bring their love of the craft of poetry into a book that teaches as well as inspires. The text also includes: exercises, chapter summaries, games, diagrams, illustrations, and 4-color reproductions of great works of art.

This comprehensive chronological anthology includes 58 essays on poetry by 53 poets. Starting with James Weldon Johnson and Robert Frost, the book offers diverse and often conflicting accounts of the nature and function of poetry. The collection includes rarely anthologized essays by Jack Spicer, Rhina Espaillat, Anne Stevenson, and Ron Silliman, as well as work by some of the finest younger critics in America, including William Logan, Alice Fulton, and Christian Wiman.