The poems in Ragtime for Beginners explore questions of perspective and memory. They consider the difference between something and the image of that thing; they attempt to distinguish a pomegranate, for example, from a picture of a pomegranate. The poems examine the spaces that not only separate people, but also that divides the self. They look at what breaks up a husband and wife married twenty-five years, and conversely, what brings together a woman and the Jehovah's Witness at her door; and they explore the seismic shifts of the self, how we assemble and disassemble our own lives.