Selected from the past twenty years of W. S. Di Piero’s prose writings, Fat displays the range and intensity that caused Poetry magazine to call him probably the most consistently compelling and idiosyncratic prose writer among contemporary American poets. Ranging from a response to 9/11 and reflections on fatherhood, food, and music, to reconsiderations of Robert Browning, James Schuyler, and other poets, to reviews of old master artists like Rembrandt and Bellini as well as modern figures like Bill Traylor and Robert Mapplethorpe, these pieces provoke and tease out the meanings of contemporary life and the legacies of the past.