Ben Hickman is the author of John Ashbery and English Poetry (Edinburgh, 2012) and has published numerous essays on the New York School, the New American Poetry, John Clare and others. He studied at University College, London and currently teaches at the University of Kent.

I have read no other work that better captures the particular stakes of poetry’s politics right now, amidst the new crises and social movements this side of Language Poetry and the dry well of Conceptualism. Hickman’s is a call to begin again that should resonate across and reanimate our discussions of poetry.

• Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. ‘Longing For Perfection’: History and Utopia in Louis Zukofsky; 2. ‘Atlantis Buried Outside’: Muriel Rukeyser, Myth and War; 3. Slipping the Cog: Charles Olson and Cold War History; 4. Husky Phlegm and Spoken Lonesomeness: Poetry Against the Vietnam War; 5. ‘You Can Be the Music Yourself’: Amiri Baraka’s Attitudes, 1974-1980; 6. Figures of Inward: Language Poetry and the End of the Avant-Garde; Notes; Bibliography

Ben Hickman is the author of John Ashbery and English Poetry (Edinburgh, 2012) and has published numerous essays on the New York School, the New American Poetry, John Clare and others. He studied at University College, London and currently teaches at the University of Kent.

I have read no other work that better captures the particular stakes of poetry’s politics right now, amidst the new crises and social movements this side of Language Poetry and the dry well of Conceptualism. Hickman’s is a call to begin again that should resonate across and reanimate our discussions of poetry.

• Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. ‘Longing For Perfection’: History and Utopia in Louis Zukofsky; 2. ‘Atlantis Buried Outside’: Muriel Rukeyser, Myth and War; 3. Slipping the Cog: Charles Olson and Cold War History; 4. Husky Phlegm and Spoken Lonesomeness: Poetry Against the Vietnam War; 5. ‘You Can Be the Music Yourself’: Amiri Baraka’s Attitudes, 1974-1980; 6. Figures of Inward: Language Poetry and the End of the Avant-Garde; Notes; Bibliography

Ben Hickman is the author of John Ashbery and English Poetry (Edinburgh, 2012) and has published numerous essays on the New York School, the New American Poetry, John Clare and others. He studied at University College, London and currently teaches at the University of Kent.

I have read no other work that better captures the particular stakes of poetry’s politics right now, amidst the new crises and social movements this side of Language Poetry and the dry well of Conceptualism. Hickman’s is a call to begin again that should resonate across and reanimate our discussions of poetry.

• Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. ‘Longing For Perfection’: History and Utopia in Louis Zukofsky; 2. ‘Atlantis Buried Outside’: Muriel Rukeyser, Myth and War; 3. Slipping the Cog: Charles Olson and Cold War History; 4. Husky Phlegm and Spoken Lonesomeness: Poetry Against the Vietnam War; 5. ‘You Can Be the Music Yourself’: Amiri Baraka’s Attitudes, 1974-1980; 6. Figures of Inward: Language Poetry and the End of the Avant-Garde; Notes; Bibliography