In this anthology, Tom Paulin aims to represent the extended family of vernacular poets and to show how Christina Rosetti, Hopkins, Whitman and other poets have drawn on the energies of popular speech such as children's chants, nursery rhymes, weather-saws and anonymous ballads in order to break with the tradition of liquid diction. Vernacular poetry is wild, anarchistic and sensuous as opposed to the plummy hegemony of full vowels.