A professor of English at the University of Montana, Robert Baker is the author of two books of criticism, The Extravagant: Crossings of Modern Poetry and Modern Philosophy and In Dark Again in Wonder: The Poetry of René Char and George Oppen, and the translator of René Char’s The Word as Archipelago. He is writing a book provisionally titled The Broken and the Mended: Taking Our Bearings in Precarious Times. His essays have appeared in ISLE, Philosophy and Literature, Cultural Critique, Literary Imagination, and many other journals.