While there have been countless books written about Detroit, none have captured its incredible musical history like this one. Detroit artists have forged the paths in many music genres, producing waves of creative energy that continue to reverberate across the country and around the world. This anthology both documents and celebrates this part of Detroit's history, capturing the emotions that the music inspired in its creators and in its listeners. The range of contributors speaks to the global impact of Detroit's music scene--Grammy winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, and poet laureates all come together in this rich and varied anthology.

Hip-hop artist, rapper, songwriter and producer, Aesop Rock is a truly talented man. While his imagery-rich, meticulously crafted lyrics are ones he explicitly writes to be sung with a beat, they evoke intellect and emotion in their poetic magnificence. Listen along, or simply soak in the words for what they are: masterful.

"The poets who fill these pages have come to testify, to bear witness to the mysterious power of Rock and Roll. -- from the Foreword by Bono "The thread or the theme That holds this tune Together is the same One that rips it open...." -- from Gimme Shelter by Bill Knott "Chunky on the shag rug, I'm looking for my anthem, I'm looking for my headphones, I'm looking for the bare spot on the rug to wallow, side-stepped on the chair-stopped door. I blast my ears out." -- from The Prophet's Song by Daniel Nester "Drums, Whatta lotta Noise you want a Revolution? Wanna Apocalypse? Blow up in Dynamite Sound?" -- from Punk Rock You're My Big Crybaby by Allen Ginsberg As revolutionary as the music it celebrates, the poetry in this electrifying anthology -- by poets such as Billy Collins, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Paul Muldoon and Philip Larkin -- turns rock upside down with indelible images and powerful expressions of the music that changed our lives.

From the poems of Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, and Emily Dickinson emerges what the author calls FemPoetiks, a discourse of female empowerment. Situating the work of these poets in their historical eras, Linda Nicole Blair considers a sampling of their poems side-by-side with a number of song lyrics by singer-songwriters Brandi Carlile, Rhiannon Giddens, and Lucinda Williams, having found commonalities of theme, motif, and language between them. Blair argues that while FemPoetiks has continued to develop in various ways in American poetry by women, the fact that this discourse finds expression in songs by Americana female artists indicates a matrilineal line of influence from the 1630s to today. In order to show the omnipresence of this powerful feminist discourse, she closes this book with eleven interviews she conducted with female singer-songwriters from around the United States. The phenomenon of FemPoetiks is not limited to the arts but extends into all areas of American life, from the domestic to the political. FemPoetiks is a woman’s truth.

Poets, teachers, and musicologists fusing studies of form, scansion, and musical creation to redefine the place of the American bard

During the late 1960s, throughout the 1970s, and into the 1980s, New York City poets and musicians played together, published each other, and inspired one another to create groundbreaking art. In "Do You Have a Band?", Daniel Kane reads deeply across poetry and punk music to capture this compelling exchange and its challenge to the status of the visionary artist, the cultural capital of poetry, and the lines dividing sung lyric from page-bound poem. Kane reveals how the new sounds of proto-punk and punk music found their way into the poetry of the 1960s and 1970s downtown scene, enabling writers to develop fresh ideas for their own poetics and performance styles. Likewise, groups like The Fugs and the Velvet Underground drew on writers as varied as William Blake and Delmore Schwartz for their lyrics. Drawing on a range of archival materials and oral interviews, Kane also shows how and why punk musicians drew on and resisted French Symbolist writing, the vatic resonance of the Beat chant, and, most surprisingly and complexly, the New York Schools of poetry. In bringing together the music and writing of Richard Hell, Patti Smith, and Jim Carroll with readings of poetry by Anne Waldman, Eileen Myles, Ted Berrigan, John Giorno, and Dennis Cooper, Kane provides a fascinating history of this crucial period in postwar American culture and the cultural life of New York City.

Punk bands have produced an abundance of poetic texts, some crude, some elaborate, in the form of song lyrics. These lyrics are an ideal means by which to trace the developments and explain the conflicts and schisms that have shaped, and continue to shape, punk culture. They can be described as the community’s collective ‘poetic voice,’ and they come in many different forms. Their themes range from romantic love to emotional distress to radical politics. Some songs are intended to entertain, some to express strong feelings, some to provoke, some to spread awareness, and some to foment unrest. Most have an element of confrontation, of kicking against the pricks. Socially and epistemologically, they play a central role in the scene’s internal discourse, shaping communities and individual identities. The Poetry of Punk is an investigation into the Anglophone punk culture, specifically in the UK and the US, where punk originated in the mid-1970s, its focus being on the song lyrics written and performed by punk rock and hardcore artists.

Originally published in 1968. In The Dome and the Rock: Structure in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens, James Baird traces the process of Wallace Steven's Grand Poem and the total structure that it accomplished in language. In the words of Professor Baird, "The full art of Stevens is organized with architectural precision. The shape of the mind becomes a building, the framework of which is founded in a willed symmetry of design." In The Dome and the Rock, James Baird exposes the capacity of Wallace Stevens to design his poetry in a manner similar to an architect, and he "reveals the craftsmanship of [Wallace's] acts as builder."