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.