Readers have long been interested in the appearance of the artist within the art and statements of literary theory and technique disclosed within a fictional narrative. Poetics in the Poem is the first study to define the self-reflexive poem, and to examine this phenomenon within the tradition of American poetry.

The essays collectively examine the full historical range of American poetry, from Puritan poetry in the seventeenth century to the contemporary lyric, and express a wide range of critical approaches to this lyric mode.