Why have so many writers chosen to dedicate poems to Patrick Lane over the years? This phenomenon fascinated Susan Musgrave long before she got the idea of collecting the best of the poems in a single anthology, which happily came together in conjunction with Lane's 55th birthday.

The contributors are some of Canada's best writers, among them Margaret Atwood, bill bissett, George Bowering, Lorna Crozier, David McFadden, P.K. Page and Al Purdy. Their poems for Lane are set in BC's Okanagan Valley, rural Saskatchewan, Newfoundland, and Toronto; in the Bessborough Hotel lounge, under the stars, at the snooker table, in the garden. There are poems lyrical, unsettling, funny, erotic; storytelling poems and sensual memories and invitations to dinner. In each poem a friend or fellow writer remembers a moment or a decade or a lifetime with Lane, or presents a poem inspired by Lane's own work.