Opposing Poetries presents a selection of Hank Lazer's writing on a range of issues in contemporary American poetry. Through a series of recurring cultural, material, and institutional perspectives, Lazer investigates the assumptions and habits that govern conflicting conceptions of contemporary American poetry, while refining, reconsidering, and questioning his own and modern theorists' assertions and claims relating to experimental poetry.

Volume One examines the shift in the governing assumptions of contemporary poetic practice. Lazer inspects the key critical works addressing poetries in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as the political and aesthetic impact of modern critics, poetry reading programs, and of the publishing industry and libraries on contemporary poetic practice.