The Vernacular Muse tackles head-on conservative Canadian critical theory and practice. Personal and provocative, Cooley's lucid essays in The Vernacular Muse range from the -vernacular in Prairie poetry, thepoetics of the line break, and the poetry of eye versus ear to substantial readings of texts by Dorothy Livesay, Margaret Laurence, Michael Ondaatje, Sinclair Ross and Robert Duncan. The first collection of critical essays from a central figure in the making and recognition of prairie writing.