The News from Poems: Essays on the 21st-Century American Poetry of Engagement

The News from Poems examines a subgenre of recent American poetrythat closely engages with contemporary political and social issues. This engaged poetry features a range of aesthetics and focuses on publictopics from climate change to the aftermath of recent wars in Afghanistanand Iraq to the increasing corporatization of U.S. culture.

The News from Poems brings together newly commissioned essays byeminent poets and scholars of poetry and serves as a companion volumeto an earlier anthology of engaged poetry compiled by the editors. Essaysby 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 whosework has sparked significant controversy. These and other poets of ourtime, the volume suggests, are engaged not only with public events andtopics but also with new ways of imagining subjectivity, otherness, andpoetry itself.