Peter Davison is that rare individual, a contemporary poet who has spent his entire working life outside of the academy. The sixty-three-year-old Davison has had a long and distinguished career as a trade-book editor, first at Atlantic Monthly Press, where he was director, and more recently at Houghton Mifflin, where he has his own imprint. In addition, Davison has served for many years as poetry editor of The Atlantic. Despite such demanding professional obligations, Davison has somehow managed to find time to write nine volumes of verse and an autobiography, as well as a substantial amount of literary journalism, a selection of which now takes its place in Michigan’s “Poets on Poetry” series. In these essays, reviews, and memoirs—culled from nearly thirty years of work—Davison is often at his best when considering the pros and cons of having no university affiliation. One must do without, for example, those long summer vacations when one can devote oneself un-interruptedly to writing; one must also do without the small, tightly-knit community of scholars, poets, and students that the academy ideally affords (Davison admits to having no close poet friends) as well as the latest volumes of chic literary theory in the library. (On second thought, this last may be a boon.)
Such liabilities do not, however, outweigh the main blessing of life outside the academy: namely, intellectual autonomy, the freedom to develop and exercise a critical perspective that is as much a product of the real world as it is