The Beautiful Lesson of the I is a collection of finely made poems by an accomplished poet. It will reward the scholar and the student of poetry, as well as the reader looking for the simple pleasures of poetic insight authentically felt. Winner of the Swenson Poetry Award 2005. Now in paperback.

Frances Brent’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Notre Dame Review, Yale Review, and in many other journals. Her work is known for its delicacy and detail, evoking both the Symbolists and some of the Asian poets who inspired them. She includes May Swenson among her influences, too; like Swenson, Brent often steadies her gaze on the material world, delighting in its humor as well as its occasional horror.

CONTENTS
 
 Acknowledgments
 Foreword by Rachel Hadas
 
 Part One The Clear and Sonorous Air
 
 The Silver Skates
 Delft 
 Port de la Rochelle 
 Plate and Insect 
 Little Dream Before Sleep 
 Lampholder and Bucket 
 Angel 
 Apple 
 Bleeding Heart 
 Blisters
 Bottles 
 Butterfly 
 Cage
 Corpse
 Dog
 Egg
 Eggs in a Basket
 Figure and Moth
 Fire
 Fire in the Doll's House
 Globe
 Harlequin
 Heart with Metal Cords
 Hen and Chick
 Horse
 Infant
 Man and Demons
 Melon
 The Place Where I Harbor Anger
 Porcelain Blue Boat
 Rain on the Mountain
 The Rat
 Rose
 Scissors
 Shells
 Snow with the Cat
 Star
 Thundermouth
 Tree
 Vagabond
 
 Part Two The Box
 
 Ghost Cat
 Relic Dream
 Theatrical of Clowns
 Old Story from the House with Puppets
 The Beautiful Lesson of the I
 Strike or Massacre
 Undo
 Memory is the Treasure House of All Things