he Granary Books publication of Angel Hair Sleeps with a Boy in My Head: The Angel Hair Anthology is both cause for celebration and an invitation to assess the significance of the poetry and overall scene associated with those writers representing the so-called second-generation New York school. 1 This appraisal is a necessary step for literary and cultural history, as The Angel Hair Anthology recovers a decades-old avant-garde movement whose influence continues to be felt in New York and national avant-garde circles. Poets associated with the Language writing phenomenon, spoken-word culture, and younger contemporary American innovative writers have all pointed to the poets and poetry scene of the second generation as especially significant. The contributors’ notes to the St. Mark’s Poetry Project anthology Out of This World are telling in terms of the debts owed to the second-generation scene. Regarding the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church reading series when Angel Hair editor Anne Waldman was