Poetry and What Is Real presents celebrated poet Richard Tillinghast's exploration of major figures in twentieth-century American, English, and Irish poetry. In engaging critical essays, Tillinghast discusses prominent British and American modernists such as Yeats and Auden, as well as neglected masters like John Crowe Ransom. Tillinghast's book is unique in its focus on Middle Generation poets, who followed the major figures like Yeats, Pound, and Eliot. Lowell and Heaney receive critical attention here, as do Elizabeth Bishop, James Dickey, Donald Hall, Sylvia Plath, Philip Levine, Derek Mahon, and other writers born from the late 1910s through 1940. In autobiographical essays such as "A Letter from Galway" and "Travel and the Sense of Place," Tillinghast also takes into account his own preoccupations as a practicing poet .   Richard W. Tillinghast's seven books of poetry include, most recently, The Stonecutter's Hand and Today in the Café Trieste. He is also the author of Robert Lowell's Life and Work: Damaged Grandeur. He is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Michigan and a frequent contributor to the New York Times.  Heis also the recipient of a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.