This study argues that the rhetoric of ignorance has helped to define the lyric genre in US poetry and its criticism. It examines how differentiations between poetic thought and knowledge have informed recent responses to Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, and Frank O'Hara-altering both their reputations as lyric poets and the material histories of their texts. Whereas new media scholars often link technology with rationality and information, "Lyric Ignorance" challenges critiques of the lyric by showing how textual equipment enables lyrical claims against knowledge. It thereby explores how the language of ignorance has informed the social and historical values of US lyric poetry in the postwar and contemporary periods.