When was poetry turned on its head? Was it with T.S. Eliot and his nemesis, William Carlos Williams? Or perhaps it was the slow burn from Emily Dickinson. Was it with Walt Whitman that everything changed? Or did the Surrealists manage to kick down the walls? Gertrude Stein, e.e. cummings? Sylvia Plath? Adrienne Rich? Or possibly Frank O’Hara? It is hard to say just when it happened, or exactly what happened (two world wars and two nuclear bombs!), but poetry had its part in the explosive history of the arts this past century, and as a result, it is now a job requirement for each poet to find for themselves a personal path towards poetry and some understanding – or invention – of what poetry is.