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American Political Poetry in
the 21st Century
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American Literature Readings in the 21st Century
Series Editor: Linda Wagner-Martin
American Literature Readings in the 21st Centurypublishes works by contemporary
critics that help shape critical opinion regarding literature of the nineteenth and twentieth
century in the United States.
Published by Palgrave Macmillan:
Freak Shows in Modern American Imagination: Constructing the Damaged Body from
Willa Cather to Truman Capote
By Thomas Fahy
Arab American Literary Fictions, Cultures, and Politics
By Steven Salaita
Women & Race in Contemporary U.S. Writing: From Faulkner to Morrison
By Kelly Lynch Reames
American Political Poetry in the 21st Century
By Michael Dowdy
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American Political Poetry in
the 21st Century
Michael Dowdy
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AMERICANPOLITICALPOETRYINTHE21STCENTURY
© Michael Dowdy,2007.
“Mariano Explains Yanqui Colonialism to Judge Collings”by Martín Espada,
from Trumpets from the Islands of Their Eviction (1987) reprinted by
permission of the Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe,Arizona State University,
Tempe,AZ.
Parts of this book have appeared in different form in the following
publications:
Callaloo:A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters
Popular Music and Society
Also by the author:
The Coriolis Effect:Poems (Chapbook),Bright Hill Press (forthcoming 2007)
All rights reserved.No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2007 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™
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Houndmills,Basingstoke,Hampshire,England RG21 6XS
Companies and representatives throughout the world.
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
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Union and other countries.
ISBN-13:978–1–4039–7644–4
ISBN-10:1–4039–7644–9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dowdy,Michael.
American political poetry in the 21st Century / by Michael Dowdy.
p.cm.—(American literature readings in the 21st century)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1–4039–7644–9 (alk.paper)
1.Political poetry,American—History and criticism.2.Hip-hop—
Influence.3.American poetry—21st century—History and criticism.
4.American poetry—20th century—History and criticism.5.Politics and
literature—United States—History—21st century.6.Politics and
literature—United States—History—20th century.I.Title.
PS310.P6D69 2007
811(cid:2).609358—dc22 2006050995
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd.,Chennai,India.
First edition:March 2007
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.
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To the poets of the fields, villages, mountains, city streets,
stadiums, bars, clubs, prisons, rallies, and marches
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Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: Political Poetry in the United States 1
1 Embodied Agency 35
2 Equivocal Agency 77
3 Migratory Agency 117
4 Contestatory Urban Agency 153
Conclusion 189
Notes 201
References 213
Index 227
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Preface
When I began reading, writing, and studying American poetry
seriously many years ago, I happened upon Adrienne Rich’s poem
“North American Time” and the particularly bold, provocative lines,
“Poetry never stood a chance/of standing outside history” (33).
Reading these lines and the other poems in Your Native Land, Your
Life(1986) set in motion the process from which this book emerged.
I started considering how poetry can be political, and I began to see
the ways in which poems can engage public debates about political,
historical, social, and economic concerns. As my academic interests
often tend, this initial inquiry led me back to my early teenage years
and the development then of latent political and intellectual interests.
In other words, I saw immediately the connection between the vari-
eties of poetry I was studying in graduate classes and the poetry of my
youth—hip-hop music. Listening to the hip-hop poets of the late
1980s and early 1990s set the foundation for my later understanding
of how poetry canbe and why it shouldbe political. The dual genesis
of this book thus reflects my conception of American poetry as a
dynamic collection of startling different, yet overlapping, methods for
transforming the world in verse.
I feared initially that it would be difficult to articulate points of
convergence for the two controlling imperatives of this book—
printed poetry and hip-hop music as potentially sociopolitically
engaged texts—but I soon realized that these forms are bound
together intimately. My dedication to contemporary American poetry,
hip-hop music, and international political issues reaches a critical junc-
ture under the broad designator “political poetry.” Despite the opin-
ions of some scholars, colleagues, and friends that contemporary
poetry is obsolete except in a few isolated conclaves and that hip-hop
music is ephemeral and vacuous, I believe that poetry—both in
printed form and in hip-hop performance—is not only a powerful
cultural form in the United States, but that it is perhaps the best
means for exploring contemporary American culture and the ways
artists make their work political. In this book I analyze the poetics of
