A Guest Among Stars collects recent essays by one of the most respected poet-critics of our time. Mark Ford discusses poets and their work, exploring context and settings behind some of the most prominent figures and works of poetry. The figures considered here range from Guillaume Apollinaire to Ezra Pound, from Derek Walcott to Joni Mitchell. The book’s title is drawn from a poem by Douglas Crase, whose oeuvre is assessed in its final essay. An appendix present an enchanting selection of letters received by Ford from John Ashbery, whose work Ford has edited for the Library of America. These letters date from 1986, when Ford was at work on a PhD thesis on Ashbery, to the final missive Ford received in late 2017.