The Room and the World: Essays on the Poet Stephen Dunn is the first book of its kind to explore and unpack the Pulitzer winning poet’s oeuvre. Including 24 essays, a preface by poet and essayist Smith, and an introduction by McCullough, this anthology illuminates Dunn’s development as a writer, his thematic obsessions, his strategies and maneuvers on the page, and locates him in the pantheon of essential American poets. Philosophical, funny, and founded on the juxtaposition of ideas with masterful tonal layering and texture, Dunn’s poems are considered some of the best of his generation. The contributors, including Dunn’s contemporaries and former students, poets and scholars, highlight Dunn’s meditations on freedom and constraint, sexiness and sorrow, sound and sense, and finding mystery in the dailiness of living. Fans will find this a crucial text that reveals the complexities of Dunn’s poetry and much about the man himself.