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More than any other individual, Paul Engle was the spirited force behind the creative writing workshops now so abundant in America. His indomitable nature, enthusiasm, and great persuasive powers, coupled with his distinguished reputation as a poet, loomed large behind the founding of the influential Iowa Writers' Workshop.
 
A Lucky American Childhood will appeal to people with memories of the small-town America that Paul Engle describes with such affectionate realism and to all those interested in the roots of this renowned man of letters.

Among students and aficionados of contemporary literature, the work of Latina and Latino poets holds a particular fascination. Through works imbued with fire and passion, these writers have kindled new enthusiasm in their compatriots and admiration in non-Latino readers. This book brings together recent interviews with fifteen Latino/a poets, a cross-section of Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Cuban voices who discuss not only their work but also related issues that help define their place in American literature. Each talks at length about the craft of his or her poetry—both the influences and the process behind it—and takes a stand on social and political issues affecting Latinos across the United States. The interviews feature both established writers published as early as the 1960s and emerging artists, each of whom has enjoyed success in other literary forms also.

As Bruce Dick's insightful questions reveal, the key threads linking these writers are their connections to their families and communities and their concern for civil rights—believing like Chicana writer Pat Mora that "the work of the poet is for the people." The interviews also reveal diversity among and within the three communities, from Victor Hernández Cruz, who traces Latino collective identity to Africa and claims that all Latinos are "swimming in olive oil," to Cuban writer Gustavo Perez Firmat, who considers nationality more important than ethnicity and says that "the term Latino erases [his] nationality."

The dialogues also offer new insights on the place of Chicano/a writings in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, on the Puerto Rican/Nuyorican establishment, and on the anti-Castro stand of Cuban-born poets. As these writers answer questions about their work, background, ethnic identity, and political ideology, they provide a wealth of biographical, intellectual, and literary material collected here for the first time. A Poet's Truth is a provocative and revealing book that not only conveys the fire of these writers' passions but also sheds important light on a whole literary movement.Interviews with:

Miguel Algarín
Martín Espada
Sandra María Esteves
Victor Hernández Cruz
Carolina Hospital and Carlos Medina
Demetria Martínez
Pat Mora
Judith Ortiz Cofer
Ricardo Pau-Llosa
Gustavo Pérez Firmat
Leroy Quintana
Aleida Rodríguez
Luis Rodríguez
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Virgil Suárez

A good poem is, to borrow from Wallace Stevens, a “poem of the mind in the act of finding / What will suffice” (“Of Modern Poetry”), a poem of the mind that both thinks and feels
 
Acts of Mind grew out of interviews conducted by the author for Poetry Miscellany. The aim of which was to help develop a method for talking about the work of contemporary poets.
 
The poets whose views appear in this volume represent a fair cross-section of the more important tendencies and impulses to be found in contemporary poetry and poetics.