“As the 21st century proceeds, in the current context of environmental catastrophe and constant war, American poetry, this book argues, is beginning to work through and, perhaps, even beyond its postmodern legacy towards a new sort of political poetry, a poetry ‘of engagement.’ The essays collected here explore tendencies such as documentary poetics and ecopoetics, focusing on writers as different as Frank Bidart, Kenneth Goldsmith, and Claudia Rankine. The poets discussed here don't witness atrocities and report back. There is no longer any ‘back’ to report to. Rather they are fully ‘embedded,’ inevitably complicit participants in an unstable and increasingly toxic global environment. Taken together, these lively, various, well-chosen essays may begin to show us the outline of something new.” —Rae Armantrout, University of California, San Diego “This volume will be one of the foremost critical texts on contemporary poetry, and it will be cited by scholars in many different fields of the humanities and social sciences for years to come.” —David Ben-Merre, Buffalo State University “A refreshing guide for those trying to understand 21st century poetry—where it has come [and] how it has grappled with recent history in a way that seems quite different from past responses to traumatic history. This will be a significant contribution to critical studies of contemporary poetry.” —Susan McCabe, University of Southern California