This dissertation explores the composing practices of contemporary American poets in the digital landscapes of the twenty-first century. Specifically, I attend to poets' production, publication, and distribution practices across networked spaces, looking at how these poets negotiate the shift from print to digital paradigms. This attention to poetry is focused on four working, active American poets: Geoffrey Gatza, Jessica Poli, Hannah Stephenson, and Johnathon Williams. The methods used in this study include oral history interviews with said poets, and rhetorical analysis of a number of digital materials including issues of electronic poetry journals, blogged histories of digital publication, and videos of poets' writing processes. My analysis has led to numerous insights that illuminate the nature of producing, publishing, and distributing writing in a digital age: how rich, networked composing environments contrast with Romantic notions of poetic composition and poetic identity as solitary and austere; how digital and cooperative publication models complicate understandings of authorial legitimacy; and how poetry journals speak to changing demands on and demands of delivery in networked spaces.
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