Poetry and Cultural Studies

Maria Damon is a professor of English at the University of Minnesota and the author of The Dark End of the Street: Margins in American Vanguard Poetry.Ira Livingston is a professor and chair of humanities and media studies at Pratt Institute; his most recent book is Between Science and Literature: An Introduction to Autopoetics.

• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS   ixINTRODUCTION   1Maria Damon and Ira LivingstonPrecursors1   Preface to Lyrical Ballads   21WILLIAM WORDSWORTH2   Two Essays on Poetry and Society   25THEODOR ADORNO3   On Some Motifs in Baudelaire   37WALTER BENJAMIN4   What Is a Minor Literature?   56GILLES DELEUZE AND FELIX GUATTARI5   Of the Sorrow Songs   61W. E. B. DU BOIS6   A Theory of Discourse   67ANTONY EASTHOPEEthnography7   Some Aspects of Folk Poetry   77AMERICO PAREDES8   The Signifying Monkey and the Language of Signifyin(g): Rhetorical Difference and the Orders of Meaning   90HENRY LOUIS GATES JR.9   Shifting Politics in Bedouin Love Poetry   116LILA ABU-LAUGHOD10   The Poetric Construction of Self   133STEVEN C. CATON11   Tell Them about Us: Some Poems from Southie   147MARIA DAMONMass Culture/Cultural Politics12   The Bride of the Assembly Line: Radical Poetics in Construction   163BARRETT WATTEN13   Assembly Poetics in the Global Economy: Nicaragua   177BRUCE CAMPBELL14   Black Texts/Black Contexts   195TRICIA ROSE15   Kickin' Eality, Kickin' Ballistics: Gangsta Rap and Postindustrial Los Angeles   199ROBIN D. G. KELLEY16   Poetry for the People   213AMITAVA KUMAR17   La Douceur de foyer: Lyric Poetry of the Year1857 as a Model for the Communication of Social Norms   226HANS ROBERT JAUSSNational (De)Formations18   Smoke Rings: Worker-Poets in the France of Louis-Philippe   237JACQUES RANCIERE19   Rimbaud and the Transformation of Social Space   248KRISTIN ROSS20   Poetry and the Public: The Social Form of Modern U.S. Poetics   266JOSEPH HARRINGTON21   Nation and Imagination   285DIPESH CHAKRABARTY22   Angel Island and the Poetics of Error   301YUNTE HUANG23   "HOO, HOO, HOO": Some Episodes in the Construction of Modern Male Whiteness   310RACHEL BLAU DUPLESSISSubject (De)Formations24   A Poem Is Being Written   333EVE KOSOFSKY SEDGWICK25   A Musician Is Being Beaten   340JOHN MOWITT26   Poetry and Anthropology   347TRINH T. MINH-HA27   Poetry Is Not a Luxury   355AUDRE LORDE28   A Blow Is Like an Instrument   359CHARLES BERNSTEIN   359Reinventing Tradition29   Sappho Is Burning: Fragmentary Introduction   375PAGE DUBOIS30   Genocide, Modernism, and American Verse: Reading Diana Der-Hovanessian   390WALTER KALAIDJIAN31   The Forms of Things Unknown   406STEPHEN HENDERSON32   History of the Voice, 1979=1981   417KAMAU BRATHWAITE33   Of Poetry and Power: Maya Angelou on the Inaugural Stage   428ZOFIA BURR34   Nuyorican Language   437MIGUEL ALGARININDEX   447

"Recommended."--Choice  "A brilliant resource."--Rain Taxi "It is time for this book. Poetry is studied more and more frequently with a cultural studies approach, and Damon and Livingston provide the perfect balance in this collection."--Juliana Spahr, coeditor of Poetry and Pedagogy: The Challenge of the Contemporary and author of several collections of poetry "A reader that brings together foundational essays on the conjunction of poetry and cultural studies is not just timely but more and more urgent as the canon of poetry taught in the academy opens beyond a small clutch of 'masterpieces' and cultural studies begins to engage popular poetry, newspaper poetry, rap, slam, and other ephemeral performance poetries. This book is an important intervention in the reconfiguration of these fields of study."--Adalaide Morris, author of How to Live/What to Do: H.D.'s Cultural Poetics