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

Included are the notebooks from such distinguished and eclectic voices as Rita Dove, Stephen Dunn, Carolyn Forche, Donald Hall, Garrett Hongo, Joy Harjo, Donald Justice, Yusef Komunyakaa, James Merrill, Mary Oliver, Charles Simic, and William Stafford.