According to the editors, "This is a historically based survey of what was happening in poets theatre from year to year in the four decades after World War II."In Michael McClure's play, the "Feast (1960)," made-up language is utilized. The players were members of the Semina group of writers. Hannah Weiner's play "RJ (Romeo & Juliet) (1966) employs one to three letter combinations of non-words adjacent to the character designations based upon a 19th century code "The International Code of Signals for the Use of All Nations." These provide directions for performance. Bruce Andrews Song No.3 (1973) is a listing of phrases with directions without character designations.Amazon.com. Caroline Bergvall: Each play included here is a gauge of the contributions, some light-hearted, some light-headed, some gestural, some structural, that a great many influential American poets have made in the shadow of experimental theatre s heydays. The editors are themselves no strangers to the guilty pleasures of this less charted genre and their additional 50 pages of notes show the extraordinary archaeological digs they have created to retrieve lively or relevant compositional or production details. Along with the preface, these notes ensure that the collection will appeal to fans as well as scholars. So don t be fooled by the sober title. This wonderful volume cannot but delight anyone who likes their plays served in the raw and the cooked of poetry. Amazon.com Michael Davidson: Kevin Killian and David Brazil's wonderful anthology reminds us of the vital role of theater among postwar U.S. poets and testifies to the enduring connection between poetry and drama from Shakespeare and Milton to Gertrude Stein and Amiri Baraka. These inventive, daring, funny, strange and exciting works are not mere sidecars to the authors' more important work in poetry but stand as significant contributions to American theater in general, often premiered at major theatrical venues (Judson Church, Living Theater, Berkeley Rep, Cherry Lane Theater, New Langton Arts, Manhattan Artists Theater). Killian and Brazil have provided a superb set of notes documenting each play's provenance as well as performance data that includes casts of characters drawn from fellow poets and friends. This is a major contribution to poetics and performance studies. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.