No American poet of this time has been more exemplary in extending the range of the forms of poetry than Jackson Mac Low. He has done this partly through the use of "nonintentional procedures," that is, systematic chance operations and three types of deterministic procedures: "translation" of musical notations into words and vice versa (from 1955 on), "acrostic read-through text-selection" (mostly 1960-1963), and "diastic reading-through text-selection" (from 1963 on--seldom in the 1990s). Nothing stands as a greater rebuke to ego-hugging poetry than the quiet work of Mac Low. However, this fact not only has but continues to make Mac Low a limited case for a certain kind of literary sensibility. As Jerome Rothenberg has pointed out, the resistance many poets feel toward Mac Low's work is itself a sign that something important is happening there. Mac Low has been extraordinarily productive. His activities have extended far beyond poetry: he is...