The book features selected essays by the great Anglo-American poet Wystan Hugh Auden (1907–1973). Most of them are taken from the book The Dyer's Hand (1963), which has become a classic of the genre. The poet talks about the relationship between theme and form | how an idea determines poetics and vice versa | how much the poetic vision of the world determines the fate of the poet and his books - and how powerless it is before the course of life | about those who are the best confirmation of this. Robert Frost, Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare, Costantinos Cavafy, William Butler Yeats, Franz Kafka - Auden is able to find a fulcrum in the space of a theme, on the axis of which one can unexpectedly unfold the narration. The poet looks at “Othello through the eyes of Iago, Yeats is subjected to a judicial investigation, the conversation about Frost is preceded by Prospero and Ariel, personifying, the first, structure and craft design, and the second, windy inspiration and inconstancy.