“For newcomers, it will be a guidebook; for experienced readers, Burt offers what may be the first concentrated statement explaining how and why we, consumers and writers of contemporary poetry, read.”

“Each of the four sections of this book is punctuated by Burt’s brilliant version of a poem by Callimachus. Burt thereby casts an eerie light on the American life that fills the rest of his book, as the poems move from the endless deferral of adolescence (‘we will know who we are once we have won’) to the plenitude and deprivations that sustain adulthood. This is a masterly book by one of the most gifted poets of his generation.” —Frank Bidart