"John Kinsella explores a contemporary poetics and pedagogy as it emerges from his reflections on his own writing and teaching, and on the work of other poets, particularly contemporary writers, with whom he feels some affinity. At the heart of the book is Kinsella's attempt to reconsider and critique pastoral in the context of a globalised world (Kinsella himself has written and taught in the USA, the UK, and his native Australia), and to conceptualise an environmentally and politically just poetry. The book has an important autobiographical element, as Kinsella explores the pulse of his poetic imagination through significant moments and passages of his life."--Jacket.