Poetry, Poets, Readers is a defense of poetry against the protective moves which claim that poets never lie because they never affirm, or that their poems exist in a separate "world." Through detailed considerations of poetry by Shakespeare, Keats, Yeats, Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, and Paul Muldoon, along with sustained meditations on the role of fact in fictions, the nature of literary value, speech acts and performative utterances issued by poets, the book sets out a fresh model for relationships between poetry, poets, and readers.