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. This work: 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; and, includes close readings of particular poems which show how readers can use these works to connect with what concerns them.