Introduction -- Walt Whitman "live": performing the public sphere -- The ordeal of Vachel Lindsay, or the cultural politics of the spoken word -- "The Black man speaks": Langston Hughes, the new Negro, and the sounds of citizenship -- Beat acoustics, presence, and resistance -- "Rappin' and readin'": the frequencies of the Black arts -- Slam nation: immediacy, mediatization, and the counterpublic sphere.