Poet John Vance Gilbert relishes language. Its sound and ambiguity have the power to transform the act of noticing into structures of awareness. By "noticing" the poet offers a structure fixed in time. Its sole purpose is to be.

As the poet Archibald MacLeish noted: "A poem should not mean But be."

The four sets of poems included in this volume are from a blank book used by the author, beginning in 1958 and continuing through to the present. These four sets date from 1960-1965.