To Delite and Instruct asks the purpose and worth of the poetry exercise or experiment. It investigates pedagogy of reading, speaking, hearing, and writing. Beginning with poems containing definitions, problems, and a word box, that is, beginning with limiting statements, centered on poems relating to mimeo workbooks from the 1960s, ending with a word hoard of the words in the book with indo-european roots sorted according to those roots, To Delite and Instruct is a thoroughgoing poetry exercise with a self-limiting vocabulary, poetry written in answer to peculiar perception problems presented devoid of information and forming an exercise in perception: a book of poems.