In his essay on Old Age Emerson wrote that there is a proportion between the designs of a man and the length of his life there is a calendar of his years so of his performance. In advancing this optimistic theory Emerson suggests that there is a deep and fundamental relationship between creation and the span of a persons life and that fostering creativity over the arc of a long life is essential to cultural as well as to personal health. It is Kathleen Woodwards purpose not so much to test Emersons theory as to acknowledge our present need for a model of wisdom in old age. She studies the late poems of four twentiethcentury American poets in each case focusing on a major meditative poem within the context of earlier work T. S. Eliots Four Quartets of 1943 Ezra Pounds Pisan Cantos of 1948 Wallace Stevenss To an Old Philosopher in Rome from The Rock in 1954 and Book V of William Carlos Williamss Paterson of 1958. Some of the important questions she addresses include Do aging and old age bring poetic fulfillment With what insights into the experience of aging do these writers provide us What are the satisfactions of old age How through the work of these poets do we come to understand the nature of wisdom Kathleen Woodward is assistant professor of English at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee.