Lyric poetry and modern politics: Russia, Poland, and the West

Introduction: acknowledged legislation

Courting disaster: Blok and yeats

Whitman, Mayakovsky, and the body politic

The death of the book a la russe: the Acmeists under Stalin

Akhmatova and the forms of responsibility: the Poem without a Hero

Avant-guarde again, or the posthumous Polish adventures of Vladimir Mayakovsky

Bringing up the rear: the histories of Wislawa Szymborska

Counterrevolution in poetic language: Poland's Generation of '68

The unacknowledged legislator's dream: Czeslaw Milosz and Anglo-American poetry

Afterword: martyrs, survivors, and success stories, or the postcommunist prophet.