Preface: How Reed Wrote Certain of His Essays---ix
I. Political Reading
1. Carl Sandburg and the Problem of Bad Political Poetry---3
2. Tom Raworth and Poetic Intuition---32
II. Sight and Sound
3. Ezra Pound's Utopia of the Eye---61
4. Gertrude Stein Speaks---69
5. The Baseness of Robert Grenier's Visual Poetics---78
6. Caroline Bergvall Begins Again---83
III. Writers Reading
7. Hart Crane and the Challenge of Akron---93
8. Robert Duncan and Gertrude Stein---110
9. Reginald Shepherd at Hart Crane's Grave---155
IV. Associative Reading
10. Rosmarie Waldrop Renews Collage---155
11. John Ashbery After All These Years---176
12. The ABCs of Substitutional Poetics---191
Notes---215
Works Cited---231
Index---243