In ""The Failure of Poetry, The Promise of Language"", Laura Jackson examines the subjects of poetry, language, and truth, the conflict between truth and art, and the range of human attitudes to the prospect of truth-speaking. Also included are a series of comments on and judgements of the poets Coleridge, Clare, Eliot, Frost, Vachel Lindsay, Lowell, Pound, Dylan Thomas, and W. C. Williams and selections from her correspondence ranging from 1948 to 1987.