“Robert Pinsky belongs to that rarest category of talents, a poet-critic.”—Robert LowellTwo important books of criticism by the Pulitzer Prize finalist and former U.S. poet laureate—now combined in a single volume with a new preface by the authorFor Robert Pinsky, poetry’s individual, human scale as a fundamentally vocal medium—with poems brought to life by one person at a time—gives poetry a unique importance in American and democratic culture and society. This book brings together two compelling works of criticism by the former poet laureate—The Situation of Poetry and Democracy, Culture and the Voice of Poetry, in which he makes a passionate and eloquent case for the vital role of poetry in a democracy.