Poetics and Justice in America, Japan, and Taiwan

Configuring Change and Entitlement

Dean Anthony Brink

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2021
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781793627919
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Asian Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Poetics and Justice in America, Japan, and Taiwan shows how entitlements are implicated in all areas of life—human and nonhuman—that poetry reaches. Through a creative adaptation of Badiou's philosophical framing, this book argues that poetry matters as a form of media particularly suited to integrating diverse fields of knowledge and attention in newspapers, Tweets, and performance as well as volumes of poetry. Recasting intertextuality as more relational than referential, the author argues for the importance of poetry in realizing how social change and ecological justice are bound up in our orientations of affiliation. Each chapter focuses on particular sets of problems engaged by poets in different contexts to various ends in Japan, the US, and Taiwan. Some chapters explore the subtle implications of openly provocative styles, while others question the muted poetic intimations of injustices that are left standing unchanged in the name of aesthetics. Poets and performance artists featured include Amiri Baraka, John Ashbery, Tawara Machi, Rodrigo Toscano, Hung Hung, and John Cage. The author argues for examining poetic expressions in terms of what discursive fusions and affiliations they embody beyond the intimation of good intentions or ironic passing over.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Poetic Configurations and Intertextuality after Badiou and Angenot
• PART I: ON ECOLOGICAL ENGAGEMENT IN AMERICAN POETRY
• PART II: SOCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL CRITICISM IN CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE POETRY
• PART III: SETTLING SCORES: POETRY OUT OF THE NEW YORK SCHOOL AND BEYOND
• PART IV: POETRY OF EMERGENT COMMUNITIES
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author