Section 1. Pure and impure poetry -- The use of the past -- Why do we read fiction? -- Section 2. Hawthorne revisited: some remarks on hell-firedness -- Mark Twain -- "The great mirage": Conrad and Nostromo -- Ernest Hemingway -- William Faulkner -- Section 3. Melville the poet -- John Greenleaf Whittier: poetry as experience -- Notes on the poetry of John Crowe Ransom at his eightieth birthday -- Section 4. A poem of pure imagination: an experiment in reading
