The first half of this volume, "The Presumptions of Death," accompanied by Leonard Baskin's wood engravings, is composed of two parts. In the first, Death speaks in his own person, though in differing moods and attitudes. In the second - in a variation from the medieval tradition of The Dance of Death in which he invites various members of society to dance with him, here he adopts the very identities of those - whore, society lady, scholar, film director - he means to embrace.

The poet's hope has been to attain as wide a variety of tone and character as possible, from top to bottom of the social scale, from levity to pathos, contempt to sympathy. The second part of the book, "Proust on Skates," expands on the themes and tones of the first part, and includes elegies for two admired contemporary poets (James Merrill and Joseph Brodsky) and a variety of other poems that resonate with notes of frailty and mortality, though an undertone of humor is rarely far away.