Robert Baker’s fields of interest are modern poetry from the romantic period through the present, twentieth-century and contemporary literature, and the relationships among literature, philosophy, and religion. His first book, “The Extravagant: Crossings of Modern Poetry and Modern Philosophy,� includes detailed discussions of Kant, Wordsworth, Lyotard, Rimbaud, Nietzsche, Bataille, Kierkegaard, Dickinson, Mallarme, and Derrida. His second book, “In the Dark Again in Wonder: The Poetry of Rene Char and George Oppen�, is a study of two late modernist poets, both of whom were fully engaged in the political upheavals of the 1930s and 1940s.