This book covers each decade from 1920 to 1990, spanning the poet's lifetime thus far. In poetry and prose entwining his personal history with crucial episodes of American history during that period, Schevill seeks to create an epical design in which one dimension dramatically mirrors the other. In effect the design follows the various probing progress of Melville, Poe, Whitman, and Twain, where fables and desires experienced in their lives were measured against those of the nation. Schevill's aims document the politics and history, including wars and depressions, of an America foundering in attempts to fulfill its promise and find its identity in the modern world.