I have a previous edition of this book which I've really enjoyed, but something seems to have washed out of this current offering. The book is dedicated to Robert Wallace, who died during the compilation of edition #4, and I'm wondering if the book didn't go to press in a daze. This edition seems slicker, perkier, and less succinct than it's siblings. Still useful and nutritious but in that low-salt, high-fiber way that I don't want my poems or books about poems to have. My suggestion is to try an earlier edition.
In my daydreams, every poet has read this book (edition #2 I can vouch for), as well as the books "Western Wind" and "In the Palm of Your Hand" and gorgeous, flexing poems are lying about everywhere. It could happen.