The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Keene, John. Punks: New & Selected Poems. The Song Cave, 2021.

John Keene's Punks: New & Selected Poems is a collection of 99 poems. The enclosed pieces are organized into seven titled sections. These sections act as thematic umbrellas for the included works. Each of the poems in the text, takes a distinct approach to form, language, style, tone, and point of view. The following summary offers a streamlined description of each section, the enclosed pieces, and their overarching themes.

In "Playland," the author presents 24 titled poems. In these pieces, the author uses the first person point of view. This means that a first person speaker's voice dictates the parameters of each work. In poems like "Mission and Outpost," "The Haymarket," "Je Te Veux," "Nights of 1985," and "Elegy: Boston," the speaker is primarily wrestling with issues of memory and the past. Particular establishments or cities have the power to transport the speaker back in time. These settings remind him of people he once loved or experiences he once had. In poems like "Suit," "On Receiving a Letter Back Stamped 'Deceased,'" "Phone Book," and "Lines," the speaker is confronting issues of death and loss, grief and sorrow. The speaker has either learned of a loved one's death, is struggling to remember the names of the dead, is trying to recover from his sorrow, or is feeling guilty over the end of former friendships and connections. In these ways, the author considers loss and grief from a range of poetic angles.

In "The Lost World," the author presents 18 titled poems. The poems in this section particularly focus on issues of love, sex, romance, and intimacy. Poems including "Try to Remember That South African Man," "You Have Smallish Hands for a Brother," "Folks Are Right, My Nose Was Wide Open," "Those Sleepy Eyes Get Me Every Time," "This Is a Kiki, Not an Interrogation," and "On Their Knees in the Whispering Grottoes," the speaker is either trying to remember an old lover, interacting with a potential lover at a bar, reflecting on the impossibility of writing about a lover, approaching and going home with a new lover, discussing love and sex with a friend, or visiting a cruising location with another companion.

In "Ten Things I Do Every Day," the author begins to introduce more politically and culturally slanted themes. The poems collected in this section still deal with issues of loss, memory, and sex, yet begin to contextualize these notions anew. The final poems in the section particularly consider notions of silence, art, and activism.

In "Trees," the author presents eight poems that he wrote in collaboration with an artist named Cynthia Gray. The enclosed poems largely eliminate the speaker's first person pronouns. These pieces centralize observation, study, and reflection. Keenly wrought images of trees, shadows, suns, and beaches inspire the speaker's thoughts about love, life, and time.

In "Manzanita," the author presents eight more poems. These pieces shift away from the first person point of view, and employ the third person perspective most frequently.

In "Dark to Themselves," 14 enclosed pieces focus on historical and political issues, particularly as they relate to the Black American experience. Pieces including "Vesey on the Eve," "Carver, One Evening, in Tuskegee," "Alain Locke in Stoughton Hall," "Jackie Robinson in Sportsman's Park, 1949," and others, focus on the lives and experiences of prominent Black historical figures. In some of these works, the author assumes the figure's first person point of view. In others, he comments upon their lives, accomplishments, and contributions to Black culture.

In the collection's final section, "Words," the author presents nine poems that centralize the possibilities of language, poetry, and music. The author toys with conventional notions of grammar, syntax, form, and structure throughout this section. These works therefore enact the ways in which dismantling mainstream American English might be an avenue to Black liberation and expression.