"From 1970 to 1998, Pearl London conducted a 'Works in Progress' poetry course at the New School in Greenwich Village, inviting poets to bring manuscripts of poems they were struggling with and offer them up for dissection and discussion. London, daughter of M. Lincoln Schuster of Simon & Schuster, was no ordinary teacher, and her guests were nothing less than nascent literary giants. These remarkably candid and inspiring conversations about aesthetic and moral matters would have faded from memory if a stash of forgotten cassette tapes hadn't been found after London's death in 2003. Writer and former New Schooler Neubauer selected and judiciously edited 23 exciting interviews, which, accompanied by photographs of the poets and reproductions of their manuscripts, reveal what poets do and why they do it. Maxine Kumin and Robert Hass have opposite views about abstraction in poetry. June Jordan speaks of poetry and politics. Galway Kinnell calls for a new form of nature poems. Derek Walcott speaks of the 'honesty of the line.' Extraordinary moments with Frank Bidart, Amy Clampitt, Lucille Clifton, Edward Hirsch, Li-Young Lee, Philip Levine, and James Merrill create a treasury of passionate and enlightening exchanges that illuminate the very life force of poetry."—Booklist (starred review)