The ever-shifting boundaries of the public and private spheres have exerted strong, though often subtle, pressures on modern life. This collection of 14 critical essays analyzes how British poetry has interacted with the public-private divide since the middle of the twentieth century. In their approach to this central but contested aspect of modern life, the essays suggest new ways not only of approaching a poem but of thinking about what gives a poem its linguistic, textual, and performative singularity. The collection discusses a wide range of poets, including Tony Harrison, Seamus Heaney, Geoffrey Hill, and Ted Hughes.