Lyric gestures: major dramatists slip into bardic guises to take up the personal and political. (New Books).(Book Review)

Why are there so many poets who also write plays, but so few playwrights who also write poetry? W.H. Auden's and William Butler Yeats's plays fill volumes; T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral is performed on hundreds of college campuses every year; Robert Frost wrote several wonderful Masques; and The Paris Review recently instituted a prize for verse drama. But it's hard to imagine our most beloved contemporary playwrights venturing into poetry. David Mamet's plays sizzle with the manic, wounded characters of contemporary life--so how could an imagination so deeply dramatic ...