How is a poem made? What inspires art? What makes a poet tick? Here is a look inside the private notebooks of some of our finest contemporary poets.

The Poet's Notebook brings together excerpts from the working notebooks of twenty-six American poets. Unsystematic, spontaneous, irreverent, intense, witty, unexpected "as a barking cat," these notebooks shimmer with reflections, speculations, confessions, quotations, aphorisms, impressions, and ruminations. They create a portrait of the artist as a purposeful gatherer and sifter of every kind of experience.

Some entries cover many years of jottings; others record a particular, intense period in the poet's life. Some include a poem that derives from the entry. And the poets have written introductory notes that address their own use of notebooks. The Poet's Notebook yields remarkable insight into the poetic temperament and method, the blue out of which poetry arises.