Table Manners follows Mosaic Press's To Be Now, published in 2003. In this new volume, Windsor's first poet laureate, Marty Gervais, turns his attention to the border stories of southwestern Ontario. The winner of the prestigious Harbourfront Prize and the Queen's Jubilee Medal, Gervais writes about the flat open farm country outside Windsor, but also about living and working in the shadow of Detroit.

The table becomes the metaphor for all that takes place in a lifetime: the place of conversation, of creativity, work, sustenance, and of deal-making and relationships.