"Welcome to the Wild West of American Poetry, the Hole-In-The-Wall of Blakean vision, a two-fisted saloon of New World dreams where you'll meet the greatest Outlaw voices from the post-war era to the present day. Here are the inventors of the Beat generation and the heroes of today's Spoken Word movement, poets who don't get taught in American poetry 101, yet hold the literary future in their tattooed hands." So begins The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, a primer for generational revolt and poetic expression, and an enduring document of the visionary tradition of authenticity and nonconformity in literature. From the Beat poetry of the '50s to the spoken word of the 1990s, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry brings readers the words, visions, and extravagant lives of bohemians, beatniks, hippies, punks, and slackers. This exuberant manifesto includes lives of the poets, on-the-scene testimony, seminal underground articles never before collected, photographs of clubs and cafes, interviews, and, above all, the poems.