The News From Poems: Essays On the 21st-Century American Poetry of Engagement.

of Joseph Harrington's chapter, "The Politics of Docupoetry," which distinguishes between documentary poets who "make use of sources" (emphasis added) and those poets who reproduce extant texts. Harrington sees "docupo" as a critique on behalf of marginalized or voiceless people, one formally distinct from the didactic modes of twentieth-century documentary flms and prose. Because contemporary docupoets have inherited the postmodern distrust of referentiality, they often exhibit a "refexive" turn, in which the focus moves from historical reference to the properties and problems of the text itself. These poets, in other words, are at least as involved in questioning the strategies and materials of representation as they are in representing-as in the case of Kaia Sand, whom Harrington discusses-the fates of Japanese prisoners interred in Vanport, Oregon. Harrington interviews several documentary poets whose responses illuminate the place of the documentary poem in its sense-making function, the link it offers between self and others, and the type of activism it is capable of. Jeffrey Gray's chapter, "'Hands Off ': Offcial Language in Contemporary Poetry," surveys the contested ground between an appropriative poetry of engagement, one that, in Jasper Johns's phrase, "does things" to found materials, and one that, as Kenneth Goldsmith says, "leaves them alone." Gray's chapter suggests that the contemporary poetics of appropriation may be linked to a larger movement in Western thinking away from interpretation and toward information, and ultimately toward a view of data as implicitly incomprehensible. The irony of a poetry of engagement existing alongside the postmodern legacy of the repudiation of the self is at least partly resolved, says Gray, by the tendency of engaged poems to comment on or subvert neutral or inert languages (guides, catalogs, corporate directives, and the like) by writing through them. Bob Perelman's chapter, "Delivering Diffcult News," offers a witty annotation of a 2013 appearance by the most celebrated contemporary appropriator, Kenneth Goldsmith, on The Colbert Report. In a brief discussion of Goldsmith's Seven Deaths and Disasters, Colbert manages to maneuver Goldsmith, "the conceptual poet who skewers authenticity," into revealing himself as both Romantically retrograde, and even, contrary to his usual persona, a poet of witness. Perelman's play-by-play commentary assesses the situation of the contemporary avant-garde vis-à-vis popular media, indicating "how art can best face the glare of the present." Like "political," the term "identity" has undergone revision in relation to American poetry. Often associated with the discourse of ethnicity as well as with the personal revelations of the confessional poets and their heirs, it also evokes an older discourse with essentialist tendencies. The chapters in Part Three offer an important counterclaim, reimagining identity in ways that re- "The News from Poems examines a subgenre of recent American poetry that closely engages with contemporary political and social issues. This "engaged" poetry features a range of aesthetics and focuses on public topics from climate change, to the aftermath of recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to the increasing corporatization of U.S. culture. The News from Poems brings together newly commissioned essays by eminent poets and scholars of poetry and serves as a companion volume to an earlier anthology of engaged poetry compiled by the editors. Essays by Bob Perelman, Steven Gould Axelrod, Tony Hoagland, Eleanor Wilner, and others reveal how recent poetry has redefined our ideas of politics, authorship, identity, and poetics. The volume showcases the diversity of contemporary American poetry, discussing mainstream and experimental poets, including some whose work has sparked significant controversy. These and other poets of our time, the volume suggests, are engaged not only with public events and topics but also with new ways of imagining subjectivity, otherness, and poetry itself"--(provided by publisher) "The News from Poems examines a subgenre of recent American poetry that closely engages with contemporary political and social issues. This "engaged" poetry features a range of aesthetics and focuses on public topics from climate change, to the aftermath of recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to the increasing corporatization of U.S. culture. The News from Poems brings together newly commissioned essays by eminent poets and scholars of poetry and serves as a companion volume to an earlier anthology of engaged poetry compiled by the editors. Essays by Bob Perelman, Steven Gould Axelrod, Tony Hoagland, Eleanor Wilner, and others reveal how recent poetry has redefined our ideas of politics, authorship, identity, and poetics. The volume showcases the diversity of contemporary American poetry, discussing mainstream and experimental poets, including some whose work has sparked significant controversy. These and other poets of our time, the volume suggests, are engaged not only with public events and topics but also with new ways of imagining subjectivity, otherness, and poetry itself"-- Provided by publisher. Contents Introduction: Contemporary Poetry and the Public Sphere / Jeffrey Gray and Ann Keniston Part One: Redefining the Political 1. Homeland Insecurity and the Poetry of Engagement / Eleanor Wilner 2. The Poetry of Engagement and the Politics of Reading / Vernon Shetley 3. Twenty-First-Century Ecopoetry and the Scalar Challenges of the Anthropocene / Lynn Keller Part Two: Redefining Authorship 4. The Politics of Docupoetry / Joseph Harrington 5. “Hands Off”: Official Language in Contemporary Poetry / Jeffrey Gray 6. Delivering Difficult News / Bob Perelman Part Three: Redefining Identity 7. Frank Bidart’s Poetics of Engagement / Steven Gould Axelrod 8. Beyond Katrina: Ecopoetics, Memory, and Race / James McCorkle 9. Claudia Rankine and the Body Politic / Elisabeth A. Frost Part Four: Redefining Poetics 10. Echo Revisions: Repetition, Politics, and the Problem of Value in Contemporary Engaged Poetry / Ann Keniston 11. Ambivalence and Despair / Kevin Prufer 12. Getting the World into the Poem: Information, Layering, and the Composite Poem / Tony Hoagland Contributors