An aspiring poet who hones his craft through hard practice experiences an unexpected setback when his younger cousin undermines his belief that skilled art-making requires time and effort.

Passive and easily satisfied, Roger spends his days managing his secondhand bookstore The Pleiade. He worships modernist classics without fully reading them, he’s gregarious but seldom invited to dinner, and he types novel after novel methodically, but all are rejected. He passes seasons of love and loss in unfailing, impassive routine.

A young couple obsessed with syntax sets off to meet their favorite author.

A writing critic reviews the construction of Charles Chesnutt’s stories and how to write surfiction.

A teacher on the Lower East side meets a friendly man with a presence resembling a dead English poet.

Upon returning to Paris after a decade-long hiatus wandering the French countryside and writing an epic, a poet encounters an enigmatic young woman who believes he is a god and wants to be his disciple,

After leaving the south to live with her husband and raise her baby, an optimistic southern woman must adjust to the wintery weather and cold company of her new home.

A Black, southern house servant with internalized racism, joins her mistress on a visit to another region, where she observes Black people acting with something she abhors: autonomy.

Despite her friction with other teachers, a young student shows exceptional talent in the writing field and is encouraged by her favorite teacher to continue to kindle that passion and become a writer someday.

A professor tries to convey to his students the magnitude of the most perfectly crafted poem ever written in the English language: “Lycidas.”