In this collection of essays on recent American, British and Irish poetry, Helen Vendler shows how contemporary life and culture is captured in lyric form by a number of well-known poets. Vendler explains the power of such poetry; it is, she says, the voice of the soul rather than the socially marked self speaking directly to us through the stylization of verse. Soul Says, the title of a poem by Jorie Graham, is thus the name of this collection.