A former Poet Laureate of the United States, and author of the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning poetry collection Time and Materials, Robert Hass follows up his National Book Critics Circle Award-winning essay collection Twentieth Century Pleasures with this volume of essays on writers, poetry, place, and photography. Hass discourses on Jack London and Wallace Stevens, Allen Ginsberg and Cormac McCarthy; he considers the almost mythical land of California; and he looks at the worlds that can be subtly apprehended and portrayed in the photographic image.