In these poems, Fitzpatrick weaves story and song, narrative and image, free verse and traditional forms to spin a yarn of life and art. These are poems of place, first and last of the rich riverbend tableau of New Orleans, but also of Greece and Spain, of Tampa and Paris and Oxford. Along the way the speaker's voice meets those of dozens of artists, from Wangechi Mutu and Picasso to Dante and Homer. The result is a pageant as various and riotous as that of life in New Orleans itself, and the invitation throughout is that of grace.