The overlap of poetry and essay in modern and contemporary American writing is the focus of this chapter. Covering the literary manifesto, essays on poetry, and the rise of the modern poet-critic, the chapter explores examples of formal and procedural essaying in postmodern and contemporary poetry. These include construction and deconstruction of a speaker-subject, theoretical experimentation, translation, documentary, and social critique. The chapter reflects on the position of the subjective "I" in the essay, lyric and experimental poetry, and hybrids of these and dwells in its conclusion on the problems of form and process in the lyric essay or essayistic poem.