For decades, the coffee houses, darkly shadowed bar stools, inner city apartments, and subway stations have sounded the echo of this phrase - poetry saved my life. Poets worldwide have uttered these words to one another like a scared truth, a shared secret. Not all of them certainly, but enough. Enough to make this little tome more than a mere collection of voices, but a vital, celebratory reminder that poetry still opens the door for those whose screams are strangled by pillows. Here are the sounds of pleasure heralded against shoulders, the uplifted voices and stark tremolos of those who have survived the turmoil and trembling because they found something so deceptively simple - so heart-wrenchingly real.