First published by Marsilio Publishers, it joined two other collections which appeared at that time: From the Other Side of the Century: A New American Poetry, 1960-1990 (1994; edited by Douglas Messerli) and Postmodern American Poetry, a 1994 poetry anthology edited by Paul Hoover.

Weinberger chooses thirty-five "innovators and outsiders," all of them from the U.S.. As in the two Donald Allen anthologies of The New American Poetry, no poets from other English-speaking countries are included.

Weinberger's two principles of inclusion are (1) only poems first published in book form since 1950 and (2) no poets born after World War II.

This chronological listing differs slightly from the order of each poet's appearance in the anthology itself, which opens with Charles Olson's poem "The Kingfishers", a poem that made its first appearance in 1950.

-- Charles Reznikoff -- Langston Hughes -- Lorine Niedecker -- Louis Zukofsky -- Kenneth Rexroth -- George Oppen -- Charles Olson -- William Everson -- John Cage -- Muriel Rukeyser -- William Bronk -- Robert Duncan -- Jackson Mac Low -- Denise Levertov-- Jack Spicer -- Paul Blackburn -- Robert Creeley -- Allen Ginsberg -- Frank O'Hara -- John Ashbery -- Nathaniel Tarn -- Gary Snyder -- Jerome Rothenberg -- David Antin -- Amiri Baraka -- Clayton Eshleman -- Ronald Johnson -- Robert Kelly -- Gustaf Sobin -- Susan Howe -- Clark Coolidge -- Michael Palmer