State of the Union: 50 Political Poems, Edited by Joshua Beckman and Matthew Zapruder, Wave Books, 2008, 112pp, $14.00 There’s no introduction to State of the Union, a new collection from Wave Books composed of, as the subtitle puts it, 50 Political Poems. There’s no afterword, no manifesto, no explanation of how the word “political” might be meeting the word “poem.” Even the press release is silent on just what editors Joshua Beckman and Matthew Zapruder might have had in mind when making their selections. But while it might be easier to review a book that is clear on what its politics are, this refusal of explanation returns the poem to centrality. Dan Chiasson, in reviewing an anthology of poems by Guantanamo detainees wrote, “It is hard to imagine a reader so hardhearted as to bring aesthetic judgment to bear on a book written by men in prison without legal recourse…You don't read this book for pleasure; you read it for evidence.”
By Sarah Mills Martha Rosler’s homeless project is back, only this time in archival form. The exhibition, “If You Lived Here Still…,” currently on view at New York’s e-Flux gallery, revisits numerous materials on homelessness and housing, which Rosler first began collecting...
“White riot –I wanna riot White riot—a riot of my own” —The Clash “Government…bullshit Black and white… fight” —The Subhumans At first the talk was all about the prospects of a “post-racial” America. Obama’s success among white voters (he received a...
A recent editorial in the New York Times by Stanley Fish, “What Should Colleges Teach?” generated enough controversy and enthusiasm to merit that he write two follow up pieces. In the first, Stanley Fish argues that the problem with English composition courses is they don’t...
A New Start As you know, this year started off with the biggest payroll fiasco that we’ve seen to date. And, as student representative and student advocates, we in the Executive and Steering Committees of the Doctoral Students’ Council have responded as quickly as possible. We have...
