Building and expanding on his previous volume of essays Body Music, Dennis Lee looks back on what has driven him as a poet: the mysterious germinating force he calls cadence. In ten trailblazing essays, he explores the role that cadence – a tumble of pre-verbal energy that he senses intuitively – has played in his poetry-writing life. At once a stealth memoir and an essential study of how a poet creates, Wrestling With Cadence: Essays on Writing and Intuition is the definitive history of a beloved Canadian poet in his own words.