Walter Sutton’s American Free Verse, unlike the more usual general discussions of American poetry, concentrates on the origins and growth of the modern free verse movement. In the words of the author, who is Professor of the Humanities at Syracuse University, the book offers “testimony to the vitality and imaginative resourcefulness of American poetry.” The title, however, does not imply an exclusive preoccupation with form, since it also refers to the historical aspects of a still-developing tradition.…