Publisher's Synopsis
In this book, Shapiro brings his characteristic warmth, humor, and many years as both poet and teacher to bear on questions surrounding two preoccupations: the role of conventions-of literary and social norms-in how we fashion our identities on and off the page, and how suffering both requires and resists self-expression. He sketches affectionate portraits of his early teachers, revisits the deaths of his brother and sister, and examines poems that have helped him navigate troubled times. Integrating storytelling and literary analysis so seamlessly that art and life become extensions of each other, Shapiro embodies in his lively prose the very qualities he celebrates in the poems he loves.
Brimming with wit and insight, this is a book for poets, students and scholars of poetry, teachers of literature, and everyone who cares about the literary arts and how they illuminate our personal and public lives.