Set against the backdrop of the Cold War, the war in Iraq, and 9/11, a little history explores the deep politics of memory and imagination while proposing a new paradigm for American studies. With preface by editor Fred Dewey, Alcalay’s book places the work of major figures like Muriel Rukeyser, Charles Olson, Edward Dorn, Diane di Prima, and Amiri Baraka, in the realm of resistance and global decolonization to assert the power of poetry as a unique form of knowledge.
Recognized by Edward Said as “that rare thing, a gifted prose writer and poet, and an accomplished intellectual,” Alcalay brings his blend of autobiographical and investigative scholarship to bear on this timely and important book of essays.
Poet, novelist, translator, critic, and scholar, Ammiel Alcalay is deputy chair of the PhD program in English at the CUNY Graduate Center, and former chair of Classical, Middle Eastern & Asian Languages & Cultures at Queens College. He is the founder and general editor, under the auspices of the PhD program in English and the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center, of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, and has edited texts by Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Diane di Prima, and Joanne Kyger for the series.
Fred Dewey is a writer, teacher, editor and activist based in Los Angeles. He directed Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center for fifteen years, from 1995 to 2010, building its archive, readings, festivals, events, and publications, and founded Beyond Baroque Books, editing and publishing over nineteen books and anthologies.
“His books are a tool for liberation.”
—Peter Lamborn Wilson
“There is no one better qualified to explore the meaning of today’s ‘culture wars,’ locally and globally.”
—Amitav Ghosh
“Alcalay brings to any subject an acute sensitivity to writing and a sophisticated understanding of the way politics works to produce and maintain literature. . . . Ammiel Alcalay is a unique and important figure in contemporary world literature.”
—Lynne Tillman
“It is Ammiel Alcalay’s consistent curiosity, his care concerning the world in which he lives, his determined, capable mind, that I value so much. Simply put, he is an indefatigable worker, and a brilliant one.”
—Robert Creeley
Distributed for UpSet Press.
