Hammer and Blazeprovides a true cross-section of the best contemporary poets writing in North America today. Editors Ellen Bryant Voigt and Heather McHugh have brought together the work of sixty poets who have taught at the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, one of the most respected and influential writing programs of its kind.The stellar group of contributors includes MacArthur fellows Campbell McGrath, Anne Carson, Edward Hirsch, Eleanor Wilner, Susan Stewart, and Lucia Perillo. Also represented here are works by Pulitzer Prize winners Stephen Dunn and Louise Gluck; Ruth Lilly Prize winner Carl Dennis; and Robert Wrigley, Thomas Lux, and B. H. Fairchild, winners of the Kingsley Tufts Award. From the couplets of Pablo Medina to the neoclassical lyricisms of Carl Phillips, this anthology appropriately reflects the cross-cultural nature of contemporary North American poetry with its most diverse and prestigious voices. A number of the poems are previously unpublished, including work by Joan Aleshire, Stuart Dischell, Stephen Dobyns, Stephen Dunn, Roland Flint, Carol Frost, Barbara Greenberg, Edward Hirsch, Pablo Medina, Steve Orlen, Gregory Orr, Kathleen Peirce, Kenneth Rosen, Daniel Tobin, Alan Williamson, and Eleanor Wilner.Hammer and Blaze, a gathering of our best poets, should garner attention from the literary world at large as well as from students of contemporary poetry and creative writing.