The Bus to Veracruz

I think Shelton speaks for the need of a poet, or poetry, in the twentieth century. His metaphorical desert is the arid world of television and popular culture, of instant physical gratification. His prison is the body which demands constant pleasure and stimulation. His poetry represents a traditional strong American philosophical response to these realities. The transcendence of the body through the imagination . . . If this isn't the poetry of prophecy, I don't know what it is. America, the twentieth century, we need more of it.