These essays share as their theme the reconsideration of the role of historical and cultural change in the evolution of 20th-century poetry and poetics. Perloff first looks at broad theoretical concerns - the evolution and contradictions of the term ""postmodernism""; the vexed relation of modernism to the primitivism ostensible inherent in it; the large-scale transformation of free verse; and the reception of poetry and poetics in the contemporary press and its cyberspace future. From this theoretical framework she then addresses individual cases - the difficult poetic language of Mina Loy; the relation of poetry and politics as exhibited by Denise Levertov and Robert Duncan; the mimetic nature of photography as understood by Roland Barthes and Christian Boltanski; the special accomplishments of John Cag's ""Mesostic"" art.