The Cambridge Companion to Twenty-First-Century American Poetry

This book offers a comprehensive introduction to studying the diversity of American poetry in the twenty-first century.

Timothy Yu (Edited by)

9781108482097, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 March 2021

300 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2 cm, 0.53 kg

A new poetic century demands a new set of approaches. This Companion shows that American poetry of the twenty-first century, while having important continuities with the poetry of the previous century, takes place in new modes and contexts that require new critical paradigms. Offering a comprehensive introduction to studying the poetry of the new century, this collection highlights the new, multiple centers of gravity that characterize American poetry today. Essays on African American, Asian American, Latinx, and Indigenous poetries respond to the centrality of issues of race and indigeneity in contemporary American discourse. Other essays explore poetry and feminism, poetry and disability, and queer poetics. The environment, capitalism, and war emerge as poetic preoccupations, alongside a range of styles from spoken word to the avant-garde, and an examination of poetry's place in the creative writing era.

Introduction Timothy Yu
1. New black aesthetics: Post civil-rights african american poetry Keith D. Leonard
2. Traditions of innovation in asian american poetry Michael Leong
3. Locations of contemporary latina/o poetry David A. Colón
4. Sovereign poetics and possibilities in indigenous poetry Mishuana Goeman
5. Changing topographies, new feminisms, and women poets Ann Vickery
6. The nearly baroque in contemporary poetry Stephanie Burt
7. Disability aesthetics and poetic practice Declan Gould
8. Queer poetry and bioethics Sarah Dowling
9. Trauma and the avant-garde Sueyeun Juliette Lee
10. Blockade chants and cloud-nets: terminal poetics of the anthropocene Jonathan Skinner
11. Give me poems and give me death: on the end of slam (?) Javon Johnson, Anthony Blacksher
12. Anti-capitalist poetry Christopher Nealon
13. Of poetry and permanent war in the twenty-first century Stephen Voyce
14. Poetry in the program era Kimberly Quiogue Andrews
15. The future of poetry studies Dorothy Wang.

Subject Areas: Literary reference works [DSR], Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literary theory [DSA], Poetry anthologies [various poets DCQ]