Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: "I learn by going where I have to go" / Lucy Collins and Stephen Matterson -- Omission and aberration in Marianne Moore's poetry / Cristanne Miller -- W.H. Auden's detours / Stephen Matterson -- "Coming up England by a different line": Philip Larkin and Louis MacNeice / Stephen Regan -- Participation without belonging: apostrophe and aberration in Seamus Heaney's North / Scott Brewster -- Another side of Paul Muldoon: the poet as lyricist / Maria Johnston -- That "saving ray of strangeness": the late poems of George Oppen / Peter Nicholls -- The one continuous line" Louis Glück and the necessity of writing / Lucy Collins -- "By writing and example": James K. Baxter's long-haired romanticism / John Newton -- X/Self: Kamau Brathwaite at the Crossroads / Lee M. Jenkins -- Unsettling language: n.o.'s 24 hours / Philip Mead -- Face to face with clumsiness: aberration, errancy and W.B. Yeats / Jefferson Holdridge -- Hartnett's farewell / Paul Durcan -- Time to send home the troops? / Carol Rumens -- Cézanne's bathers / Harry Clifton.

"This critical work considers the role played by elements that might be considered aberrational in a poet's oeuvre. With an introductory essay exploring the nature of aberration, these fourteen contributions investigate the work of major 20th-century poets from the U.S., Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand"--Provided by publisher.