In this article, the author relates how his friends do not understand the type of work that he does as a poetry teacher. His friends know him as someone who cheers on the Yankees voraciously with them and will roll his sleeves up and stuff three knockwurst sandwiches down his throat, trying to explain how Walt Whitman would approve of this, that being a poet and a regular person is not necessarily contradictory at all. He relates that his friends don't get it. His friends know that he reads Emily Dickenson at night, but they choose to ignore that aspect of his personality. Here, he articulates the heart of his work as a poetry teacher for his friends who don't get it, and for others who do.