A volume in the Poets on Poetry series, which collects critical works by contemporary poets, gathering together the articles, interviews, and book reviews by which they have articulated the poetics of a new generation. Ezra Pound famously said that literature is "news that stays news, " but recent experiments in poetry and the sciences allow us to enlarge the statement to bring information theory and biology to bear on the issue—in particular, how the information theory-based model of self-organization from noise offers a way to look at language as an art material as well as a mode of communication. This concept directs these essays on poetry by contemporary poet Cole Swensen.