Quixotic in his hapless drive to know everything in a world where nature itself is elusive, the narrator of these 95 free-verse poems struggles with his impulse to study and think when there is little that can be understood as language can be deceiving and history proposes and then disposes its patterns. Looking for a hidden order and raising big questions in his wake, the narrator takes on the universe, human nature, and the meaning of it all.

Jeffrey Wainwright is the author of the poetry collections Clarity or Death!, Heart's Desire, Out of the Air, and The Red-Handed Pupil and two books of criticism, Acceptable Words: Essays on the Poetry of Geoffrey Hill and Poetry: The Basics. He is a former professor at Manchester Metropolitan University, the University of Wales, and Long Island University.