Claudia Rankine

Michael Dowdy

Poetics of Social Engagement emphasizes the ways in which innovative American poets have blended art and social awareness, focusing on aesthetic experiments and investigations of ethnic, racial, gender, and class subjectivities. Rather than consider poetry as a thing apart, or as a tool for asserting identity, this volume’s poets create sites, forms, and modes for entering the public sphere, contesting injustices, and reimagining the contemporary. Like the earlier anthologies in this series, this volume includes generous selections of poetry as well as illuminating poetics statements and incisive essays. This unique organization makes these books invaluable teaching tools. A companion website will present audio of each poet’s work. Poets included: Rosa Alcalá Brian Blanchfield Daniel Borzutzky Carmen Giménez Smith Allison Hedge Coke Cathy Park Hong Christine Hume Bhanu Kapil Mauricio Kilwein Guevara Fred Moten Craig Santos Perez Barbara Jane Reyes Roberto Tejada Edwin Torres Essayists included: John Alba Cutler Chris Nealon Kristin Dykstra Joyelle McSweeney Chadwick Allen Danielle Pafunda Molly Bendall Eunsong Kim Michael Dowdy Brent Hayes Edwards J. Michael Martinez Martin Joseph Ponce David Colón Urayoán Noel

Poetics of Social Engagement

American Poets in the 21st Century

Showcases the most innovative and politically engaged poets working in the U.S.

Broken Souths puts Latina/o and Latin American poets into sustained conversation in original and rewarding ways.

Latina/o Poetic Responses to Neoliberalism and Globalization

Broken Souths

Broken Souths offers the first in-depth study of the diverse field of contemporary Latina/o poetry. Its innovative angle of approach puts Latina/o and Latin American poets into sustained conversation in original and rewarding ways. In addition, author Michael Dowdy presents ecocritical readings that foreground the environmental dimensions of current Latina/o poetics. Dowdy argues that a transnational Latina/o imaginary has emerged in response to neoliberalism—the free-market philosophy that underpins what many in the northern hemisphere refer to as “globalization.” His work examines how poets represent the places that have been “broken” by globalization’s political, economic, and environmental upheavals. Broken Souths locates the roots of the new imaginary in 1968, when the Mexican student movement crested and the Chicano and Nuyorican movements emerged in the United States. It theorizes that Latina/o poetics negotiates tensions between the late 1960s’ oppositional, collective identities and the present day’s radical individualisms and discourses of assimilation, including the “post-colonial,” “post-national,” and “post-revolutionary.” Dowdy is particularly interested in how Latina/o poetics reframes debates in cultural studies and critical geography on the relation between place, space, and nature. Broken Souths features discussions of Latina/o writers such as Victor Hernández Cruz, Martín Espada, Juan Felipe Herrera, Guillermo Verdecchia, Marcos McPeek Villatoro, Maurice Kilwein Guevara, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Jack Agüeros, Marjorie Agosín, Valerie Martínez, and Ariel Dorfman, alongside discussions of influential Latin American writers, including Roberto Bolaño, Ernesto Cardenal, David Huerta, José Emilio Pacheco, and Raúl Zurita.

Michael Dowdy

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