This book discusses how masculinity is represented by women poets and gay poets - but, most of all, how it is represented by straight male poets. It shows how Robert Lowell and John Berryman both identify a gender malaise in themselves which they struggle with throughout their careers, and how Derek Walcott displays a profound gender insecurity in relation to the colonial experience. It discusses the impact on Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney of their belief in a transcendent feminine principle, and how C.K. Williams and Paul Muldoon display the impact of feminism on male poets who are young enough to have encountered it at a formative period.