The Poet Resigns:
Poetry in a Difficult World

Essays

The essays in The Poet Resigns: Poetry in a Difficult World set out to survey not only the state of contemporary poetry, but also the poet's relationship to politics, society, and literary criticism.

In addition to pursuing these topics, The Poet Resigns peers into the role of the critic and the manifesto, the nature of wit, the poetics of play, and the persistence of modernism, while providing detailed readings of poets as diverse as Harryette Mullen and Yvor Winters, George Oppen and Robert Pinsky, Pablo Neruda and C.S. Giscombe.  

Behind it all is a sense of poetry, not just as an academic area of study, but also as a lived experience and a way of understanding. Few books of poetry criticism show such range yet the core questions remain clear: what is this thing we love and call poetry, and what is its consequence in the world?

‎University of Akron Press
February 1, 2013
144 pages

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Praise for The Poet Resigns

There is enough to think about in The Poet Resigns to fill a shelf of books, and if Archambeau has the tendency sometimes to answer the big questions of our poetic moment a bit more rapidly than I’m comfortable with, he’s to be given abundant kudos for raising them in such a clear and thoughtful manner, and for tackling them in such lively and intelligent prose.

—Mark Scroggins, Notre Dame Review

Robert Archambeau is a remarkably good-natured and far-thinking writer. His prose style is welcoming, making his essays enjoyable for readers from a range of aesthetics. He tackles heated subjects with a civil and understated tone, often employing self-deprecating humor, which adds to the appeal of his work.

— David Caplan, University of Chicago Press Journals