The essays have a thrilling range and many levels. For example, we sit with the teenage Mark Strand reading for the first time a poem that truly amazes him. It is "You, Andrew Marvell" by Archibald MacLeish, in which night sweeps in an unstoppable but exhilarating circle around the earth towards the speaker at noon. The essay then goes on to explicate the poem, but it evokes as well, through its form and content, the poem's meaning -- time's circular passage -- with the young Strand first happening upon it, the older Strand seeing differently into it, but still amazed.

Other essays explore in original and thought-provoking ways the relationship of photographs and poems, the eternal nature of the lyric, the contemporary use of old forms, four American views of Mount Parnassus (on our shores reduced to a "hill"), an alphabet of poetic "influences." And we visit Strandian parallel universes, which point out through their absurdity the lack of a vital discussion on poetry in our culture at large: a nursery school teacher details her frustrations in translating Rilke as she undresses for a tot's father, and a poetically inclined president reminisces during his farewell address about how he read Chekhov to his Cabinet to remind them of their own unimportance.

In "The Weather of Words, " Mark Strand gives us a richer understanding of poetry -- how to approach it and why it matters.