Deals with the work of a number of poets, including Emily Dickinson, A.E. Housman, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Burns, Walt Whitman and Robert Frost.

Richard Wilbur's verse translation of Tartuffe has been acclaimed as a masterpiece in its own right. Set in rhymed couplets, it captures not only the tone of the original but the dramatic energy as well. Not surprisingly, the play in this translation has been performed regularly over the years. One of Moliere's most popular plays, Tartuffe, written in 1669, tells the story of Orgon, a rich bourgeois who has become a prude and bigot in his middle age....

Don Juan, the "Seducer of Seville," originated as a hero-villain of Spanish folk legend, is a famous lover and scoundrel who has made more than a thousand sexual conquests. One of Moliere's best-known plays, Don Juan was written while Tartuffe was still banned on the stages of Paris, and shared much with the outlawed play. Modern directors transform Don Juan in every new era, as each director finds something new to highlight in this timeless classic....

In these long interviews, conducted during the last five years of his life, a noted writer talks about his professional life as a poet, playwright, lawyer, editor of Fortune, Librarian of Congress and Harvard professor. Relatively reticent about his family, MacLeish (18921982) is outspoken about FDR, Truman ("totally himself all the time"), Joe McCarthy, George Marshall (a remarkable man of great intellectual powers) and Alger Hiss ("the most complete...