According to philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, alterity can exist only in its infinite and fluid nature in which the aspects of it that exceed the human ability to fully understand it remain unthematized in language. Levinas sees the encounter between self and other as the moment that instigates ethical responsibility, a moment so vital to avoiding mastering what is external to oneself that it should replace Western philosophy’s traditional emphasis on being as philosophy’s basis, or “First Philosophy.” Levinas’s conceptualization of language as a fluid, non-mastering saying, which one must continually re-enliven against a congealing and mastering said, is at the heart of his ethical project of relating to the other of alterity with ethical responsibility, or proximity. The imaginative poetic language that some contemporary poetry enacts, resonates with Levinas’s ethical motivations and methods for responding to alterity. The following project investigates facets of this question in relation to Levinas: how do the contemporary poets Peter Blue Cloud, Jorie Graham, Joy Harjo, and Robert Hass use poetic language uniquely to engage with alterity in an ethical way, thus allowing it to retain its mystery and infinite nature? I argue that by keeping language alive in a way similar to a Levinasian saying, which avoids mastering otherness by attending to its uniqueness and imaginatively engaging with it, they enact an ethical response to alterity. As a way of unpacking these ideas, this inquiry will investigate the compelling, if unsettled, convergence in the work of Levinas and that of Blue Cloud, Graham, Harjo, and Hass by unfolding a number of Levinasian-informed close readings of major poems by these writers as foregrounding various forms of Levinasian saying. / Ph. D. / This project grounds itself on questions of what makes something that is outside of oneself unique, and of how to use language to let that entity, or being, retain its uniqueness alongside the human quest to understand the world that is always in danger of overtaking the not-I. Philosopher Emmanuel Levinas thought these questions were the critical ones for reframing basic issues of humanity. His work asserts that in order to become conscious selves and to relate to other people without dominating them, it is necessary to open up to the force of the encounter with those who are different from you, and whom you cannot fully conceive, allowing them to remain partially inconceivable. The site for relating in this ethically responsible way exists in language that constantly acknowledges that it cannot capture the object of its descriptions, as opposed to language that attempts to appropriate the other through its usual operations. A unique intersection between these ideas regarding ethics occurs when one considers contemporary poetry, which engages with similar considerations. Therefore, by reading four contemporary poets with vastly different cultural backgrounds: Peter Blue Cloud, Jorie Graham, Joy Harjo, and Robert Hass in a way that considers how they use language to relate ethically to the world beyond their material and intellectual grasp, it is possible to see how Levinas’s ideas might operate in actual language sensitive to these issues.