1. Twentieth-century poetics: an overview; 2. The language of crisis: Robert Lowell and John Berryman; 3. The language of flux: Elizabeth Bishop and John Ashbery; 4. The language of incarnation: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Everson; 5. The language of witness: Adrienne Rich; 6. The language of vision: Denise Levertov and Robert Duncan; 7. The language of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E: Robert Creeley, Michael Palmer, Lyn Hejinian, Robert Grenier, Susan Howe, and Fanny Howe.