Herbert's "Mr Cogito," a mild, ironic intellectual who has survived totalitarianism and is trying to figure out how to live with dignity, is one of the great recurring characters in world poetry. The "Envoy of Mr Cogito" ends with an instruction to survive with one's honor intact even when everything is lost. Herbert is the poet of moral resistance without sentimentality; his influence on American poets like Robert Hass and Robert Pinsky has been enormous.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.