A Poetics of Global Solidarity

"A Poetics of Global Solidarity traces the transformations of the engaged tradition of modern and contemporary American poetry and its imagination of a collective subject position rooted in a vision of global solidarity. The presence or absence of social and political movements has crucially shaped the imagination of writers who see poetry as a form of cultural practice with the potential of sparking political activism. The trajectory of this book is provided by the various social and political movements in whose context politically committed poets and lyricists imagined global poetic subjectivities beyond the ideologies that maintain the exclusionary mechanisms of the modern world-system. A Poetics of Global Solidarity offers readings of the poetry of the Great Depression, the Harlem Renaissance, post-World War II political poetry, the Beats, and contemporary poetry by writers such as Amiri Baraka and Mark Nowak. Broadening the poetic archive, the book includes discussions of song lyrics ranging from those of IWW songwriter Joe Hill to contemporary Rap lyricists and hardcore punk bands, all of which have contributed to the creation of a poetics of global solidarity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries"-- "A Poetics of Global Solidarity establishes an engaged tradition of American poetry. Discussing a wide range of poems and song lyrics from the 1910s to contemporary poetic expression, the book shows how poets and lyricists imagine a vision of global solidarity in the context of particular social, political, and literary movements"--