In this work, J.D. McClatchy, a poet-critic, leads the reader into the mysteries of poetry: how it draws on our lives, and how it leads back into them. In a series of linked essays progressing from the autobiographical to the critical - and closing with a translation of Horace's "Ars Poetica" - the book offers a look into the poetic mind. It begins with a portrait of his development as a poet and as a man, and provides details about some of those who helped shape his sensibility - from Anne Sexton in her final days, to Harold Bloom, his enigmatic teacher at Yale, to James Merrill. Later sections range through poetry past and present - from Emily Dickinson to Seamus Heany and W.S. Merwin - with incisive criticism. A critical unpacking of Alexander Pope's "Epistle to Miss Blount" is interwoven with a psychological portrait of a poet plagued by both romantic longings and debilitating physical deformities. The author also takes a look at the literary imagination: Elizabeth Bishop through her letters, and a tribute to the Broadway lyrics of Stephen Sondheim and the tradition of light verse.