Longtime friends, Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser always exchanged poems in their letter writing. After Kooser diagnosed with cancer several years ago, Harrison found that his friend's poetry became "overwhelmingly vivid," and they began a correspondence comprised entirely of brief poems, "because that was the essence of what we wanted to say each other". In these epigrammatic, aphoristic poems, two accomplished poets explore love and friendship and their passionate search for a little wisdom, pausing to celebrate the natural world, aging, everyday things and scenes, and poetry itself. When asked about attributions for the individual poems, one of them replied, "Everyone gets tired of this continuing cult of the personality...This book is an assertion in favor of poetry and against credentials".