'Richard Howard is an indispensable, unique poet whose work instructs by delighting, and delights by instructing. This volume vindicates a lifetime's imaginings, and establishes him as Robert Browning's authentic heir at rendering the inner voices of the cultural past and present.' Harold Bloom 'If there is a literary paradise where one could imagine Baudelaire and Browning, Auden and Henry James, James Merrill and Gautier, amiably conversing and declaring their views and tastes to one another, one would expect to hear the name of Richard Howard raised with warmth and enthusiastic satisfaction a" for his deftness, his wit, his incomparable copiousness, his vast range of subjects, and his burnished intelligence. He has achieved a stature of eminence as a poet beyond challenge or dispute. Inner Voices is a wonder.' Anthony Hecht Inner Voices gathers for the first time poems from Richard Howard's twelve published collections, presenting a representative selection of the work of a writer termed by the New York Times Book Review 'a powerful presence in American poetry for forty years'.