Describes the author's travels as he walked the Pennine Way through England and stopped each night to give a poetry reading in a different village in return for a place to sleep.

"Weaving together the biographies of two poets separated by some eight-hundred years, Robert Richardson brings to life one of the most famous-- and ancient works of poetry in all existence"--Front jacket flap.

Secret Agent Augustus Whittlesby has spent a decade undercover in France, posing as in insufferably bad poet. The French surveillance officers can't bear to read his work closely enough to recognize the information drowned in a sea of vergiage. New York-born Emma Morris Delagardie is a thorn in Agustus's side. Widowed for four years, she entertains herself by drinking too much champagne, holding a weekly salon, and loudly critiquing Augustus's poetry....