Bold Type's Poetry Editor Ernest Hilbert writes "While careful to qualify his critical assumptions, Michael Schmidt clings to no creaky, fashionable ideological apparatus; nor does he drag the bodies of the deceased through the streets of Parnassus, as has become so fashionable in our cynical and hostile age. He inspires us to read further than we have, and to reread those poems that touched us so much once, when we were younger and followed them as though they were stars by which to navigate the dark waters of life."

Read an excerpt from Lives of the Poets and an essay on Schmidt.