As Poet Laureate, Pinsky is one of America's best spokesmen for poetry, In this book, writing plainly and specifically, for general readers as well as for poets, he explains in detail how the sounds of poetry embody the work of art that is "performed" in us when we read it aloud.

Pinsky devotes clear, informative chapters to the sonic elements of poetry: accent and duration, syntax and line, like and unlike sounds, blank verse and free verse. He illustrates these with examples from the work of some fifty poets - from Shakespeare, Milton, and Emily Dickinson to William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, Louise Glock, C.K. Williams, and Frank Bidart.