This is a wonderful book and about as kind and wise a book as you could find about what it means to write poetry and why. While the book trends towards more classicism in its second half it is , as the writer was, an extraordinarily generous description of the art by one of its great practitioners. If you are of a short attention span read the first four chapters. It is also well written which is not, from experience, something one can be sure of even though the writing is about writing. ( )