The Instant of Knowing: Lectures, Criticism and Occasional Prose joins recent collections of Jacobsen's poetry and short stories, bringing together for the first time the highlights of this distinguished poet's long and varied career as a literary critic, lecturer, and reviewer. Of special interest are two lectures delivered at the Library of Congress while she was Consultant in Poetry there, and a rich assortment of never before collected op-ed and travel pieces from the Baltimore Sun. The volume also includes critical pieces on Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, e.e. cummings, Robert Lowell, A.R. Ammons, Samuel Beckett, and J.D. Salinger; an unpublished lecture, "The Admiring Bog," on the perils of poetic celebrity; and an extended interview with John Wheatcroft. The book is edited and introduced by the poet Elizabeth Spires, and concludes with three recent, uncollected poems of Jacobsen's.