Poetic Investigations studies five contemporary writers whose radical engagements with poetic form and political content shed new light on issues of race, class, and gender. In a detailed reading of three American poets--Susan Howe, Nathaniel Mackey, and Lyn Hejinian--and two African-Caribbean poets, Kamau Brathwaite and M. Nourbese Philip, Paul Naylor argues that these writers have produced new forms of poetry that address the "holes," or...