This book is based on my M.A. thesis of the same title, which was handed in at the Karl-Franzens-University of Graz, Austria, in May 2001. Parts of the book were revised in 2002 at the University of Dortmund, Germany, where I taught a proseminar on contemporary American performance poetry. Thanks are due to my students, who not only engaged in stimulating discussions on many parts of this book, but also took part in a poetry jam at the ‘Subrosa’ in Dortmund, where students and local poets from Dortmund and guest students from the USA experienced poetry as a social and cultural event.