Written by a leading critic, this invigorating introduction to modernist American poetry conveys the excitement that can be generated by a careful reading of modernist poems.

• Encourages readers to identify with the modernists’ sense of the revolutionary possibilities of their art.


• Embraces four generations of modernist American poets up through to the 1980s.


• Gives readers a sense of the ambitions, the disillusionments and the continuities of modernist poetry.


• Includes close readings of particular poems which show how readers can use these works to connect with what concerns them.