Great Regulars: And what a heartbeat, a heartbeat

in 54 installments, working its way through Marie Howe and Mark Doty, C.K. Williams, Susan Wheeler, Edward Hirsch, all talking, thinking, writing together as poets rarely do. This is the point of the renga, the 900-year-old Japanese collaborative form that, co-editor Carol Muske-Dukes explains, "was/is a conversation, and it seemed the right time for America to hear its poets converse." Yes, the right time, fall 2008 to spring 2009, from just before the election to just after the inauguration of Obama, a period that asserts itself in these pages in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

Here, for instance, is Ed Sanders' entry in its entirety:

from David L. Ulin: Los Angeles Times: The Reading Life: The United States of Poetry

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