Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry and Politics since 1900
- The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry and Politics since 1900
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Space of Public Memory
- Chapter 2 Poetry and Propaganda
- Chapter 3 Depression-Era Poetics and the Politics of How to Read
- Chapter 4 The Politics and Poetics of Revolution
- Chapter 5 Wallace Stevens, Stanley Burnshaw, and the Defense of Poetry in an Age of Economic Determinism
- Chapter 6 The Line of Wit
- Chapter 7 US Poets on War and Peace
- Chapter 8 Institutions of American Poetry
- Chapter 9 African American Political Poetries
- Chapter 10 Our Terribly Excluded Blue
- Chapter 11 Poetry and the Prison Industrial Complex
- Chapter 12 “Oh Say Can You See”
- Chapter 13 The Political Resonances of Hip Hop and Spoken Word
- Chapter 14 Language as Politics in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century American Poetry
- Chapter 15 Renovating the Open Field
- Chapter 16 Transcultural Agency
- Chapter 17 Ecopoetry Now
- Chapter 18 The Politics and History of Digital Poetics
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to …
- References
Chapter 1 - The Space of Public Memory
Monuments, Memorials, and American Poetry from “The New Colossus” to Black Lives Matter
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 April 2023
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Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry and Politics since 1900
- The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry and Politics since 1900
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Space of Public Memory
- Chapter 2 Poetry and Propaganda
- Chapter 3 Depression-Era Poetics and the Politics of How to Read
- Chapter 4 The Politics and Poetics of Revolution
- Chapter 5 Wallace Stevens, Stanley Burnshaw, and the Defense of Poetry in an Age of Economic Determinism
- Chapter 6 The Line of Wit
- Chapter 7 US Poets on War and Peace
- Chapter 8 Institutions of American Poetry
- Chapter 9 African American Political Poetries
- Chapter 10 Our Terribly Excluded Blue
- Chapter 11 Poetry and the Prison Industrial Complex
- Chapter 12 “Oh Say Can You See”
- Chapter 13 The Political Resonances of Hip Hop and Spoken Word
- Chapter 14 Language as Politics in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century American Poetry
- Chapter 15 Renovating the Open Field
- Chapter 16 Transcultural Agency
- Chapter 17 Ecopoetry Now
- Chapter 18 The Politics and History of Digital Poetics
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to …
- References
Summary
When W. H. Auden – thirtysomething poet, English expatriate, and new New Yorker – wrote the words “Poetry makes nothing happen,” he was mere miles from a 305-foot-tall counterexample. Poetry didn’t build the Statue of Liberty, and didn’t notably influence the statue’s French sculptor, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, or the Americans who funded and built its pedestal. But “The New Colossus” (1883), a sonnet by the Jewish American poet and humanitarian Emma Lazarus, did raise $1,500 at auction for the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund – not much, but for fourteen lines, not bad. In an inestimably greater contribution, “The New Colossus” prospectively transformed the statue into a monument to immigration, a “Mother of Exiles” from whose “beacon-hand / Glows world-wide welcome.”
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023
References
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