The presentation of poetry to auditor and reader involves a complex interaction of rhetorical, orthographical and visual mediating skills. At issue are the nature of "authority," the creation of a readership attuned to the writer's resonance, and a delicate negotiation between literary tradition and individual talent. Leading scholars focus on the presentation of major poetic texts from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, making comparisons across boundaries of generic form. The book includes consideration of the work of Spenser, Milton, Pope, Blake, Wordsworth, Browning, Yeats, and Lawrence.