We take for granted, mostly, that youth is an advantage for basketball players and ballerinas; it's not so clear, however, that artistic prowess need lessen in old age. Those painters, musicians, and writers who pursue their craft in "sunset years" have something to report on that the prodigy cannot address. Late style is Delbanco's subject, its losses and gains, and how in a world where more artists live long we chart the arc of time. If "Bodily decrepitude is wisdom," as William Butler Yeats suggests, of what does that wisdom consist?

Nicholas Delbanco is the Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor of English Language and Literature and Professor of English at U-M.