POETRY
Singing in Time (1972)
Anthracite Country (1982)
Town Life (1988)
House of Days (1997)
The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems (2005)
FICTION
The Love Run (1980)
The Patch Boys (1986)
The Last Station (1990)
Bay of Arrows (1992)
Benjamin’s Crossing (1997)
The Apprentice Lover (2002)
The Passages of H.M. (2010)
NONFICTION
Theodore Roethke: An American Romantic (1979)
An Invitation to Poetry (1987)
John Steinbeck: A Biography (2004)
Some Necessary Angels: Essays on Literature and Politics (1997)
Robert Frost: A Life (1999)
One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner (2004)
The Art of Teaching (2005)
Why Poetry Matters (2008)
Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America (2008)
Jesus: The Human Face of God (2013)
Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal (2015)