This article explores the relationship between research and teaching, arguing that each of them is both a demanding science and an imaginative art, and that they both manifest the values and processes of learning, the open mind and the open heart, as it were. This is a rather different proposition from the notion that "evidence" can be "applied" to teaching in an unproblematic way. The author argues that "what works" is not at all self-evident but needs to be held up to full ethical and intellectual discussion--which teacher-research is in a strong position to lead. The author goes on to suggest that teacher-research is about valuing the real-time, knowledge-in-action, context-specific understandings which people use to solve new problems. The article begins and ends with allusions to poetry, as one way of connecting the rational with the imaginative worlds that we inhabit.