Communism and Poetry

Writing Against Capital

Ruth Jennison, Julian Murphet, Ruth Jennison, Julian Murphet

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9783030171551
• eBook ISBN: 9783030171568
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Communism and Poetry: Writing Against Capital addresses the relationship between an upsurge in collective political practice around the world since 2000, and the crystallization of newly engaged forms of poetry. Considering an array of perspectives—poets, poet-critics, activists and theorists—these essays shed new light on the active interface between emancipatory political thought and poetic production and explore how poetry and the new communism are creating mutually innovative forms of thought and activity, supercharging the utopian imagination. Drawing inspiration from past connections between communism and poetry, and theorizing new directions over the years ahead, the volume models a much-needed critical solidarity with creative strategies in the present conjuncture to activate movements of resistance, on the streets and in verse.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Other Minimal Demand
• 3. The Relation Between Poetry and Poems Is Political, Sometimes
• 4. “Everywhere, Worlds Connect”: Realist Poetics and the Ecologies of Capitalism
• 5. “The Changing Same”: Value in Marx and Amiri Baraka
• 6. Mayakovsky at Mirafori: Operaismo and the Negation of Poetry
• 7. Sean Bonney: Poet Out of Time
• 8. Notes on Poetry and Communism: Abolition, Solidarity, Love
• 9. “Wide as Targes Let Them Be,” or, How a Poem Is a Barricade
• 10. “A Whole New Set of Stars”: Poetics and Revolutionary Consciousness
• 11. Free Dissociation/Logic
• 12. Just Come Now
• Back Matter