The poet and critic M.L. Rosenthal explores the sources of poetry in our daily lives, in the common speech, and in the awareness and sensibility that poets share with the rest of humanity. Through a wide range of examples drawn from poetry, he explores how art is a natural human activity that makes us aware of ourselves and the world around us in a way as never before. He exposes poetry's relation to our surroundings, politics, language, sex, love, and death.