In this series of elegant and wide-ranging meditations on language, wilderness, poetry, and technocracy, John Steffler takes us on a guided tour of one poet's mental workshop. His focus is vividly personal, shaped by his interests and experience, and at the same time universal. What is it to be human? Steffler is not afraid to be provocative, but he is also compassionately alert to moral, political, and cultural complexity. This is a book that will convince you that poetry can indeed make a great deal happen.