Poets Beyond the Barricade: Rhetoric, Citizenship, and Dissent after 1960 (Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique) - Hardcover

"In the US, poetry has not been the voice of public dissent that it is in other countries. Smith's book gives readers a sense of the poetry community of protest. If that community's poetry does not have a larger voice, it is not because the poets and their audiences are not engaged or because the poetry is not good--much political poetry is of the highest caliber--but instead because in the US poetry is a marginalized voice in mainstream culture. Smith (Ryerson Univ., Toronto) explores some of the better-known early political poets--Denise Levertov, Adrienne Rich, Charles Olsen, and Robert Duncan--all of whom engaged the activism of the 1960s and the draft. Smith moves to the Poets against the War movement, devoted to using poetry to protest the Iraq War. Smith explains that Poets against the War uses the Internet, whereas Poetry Is Public Art (PIPA) uses public spaces. Smith explores the way political poetry continues to confront public policies and challenge the status quo. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, professionals." --CHOICE "Poets Beyond the Barricade is original in that it makes an argument about poetry and the social through the lens of rhetoric rather than literary history. It tries to answer the perennial question about the relationship of poetry to politics and the public good that depends on arguments about public speech, persuasion and effectiveness rather than staying within the small world of literary criticism. It is significant because these are real issues that continue to haunt practitioners and scholars of poetry. And it has people in it as well as texts. It will serve a useful bridge between poetry studies, public sphere debates, rhetoric/composition studies, and a growing academic audience thirsting for models of 'engaged scholarship.'"--Maria Damon, author of Poetics: From Bagel Shop Jazz to Micropoetries and co-editor of Poetry and Cultural Studies: A Reader Normal0falsefalsefalseMicrosoftInternetExplorer4 "Smith provocatively reopens the ancient question of the relationship of rhetoric and poetics with this powerful analysis of key moments in American radical poetry. Scholars of rhetoric, politics, and literature will find both the case studies and the theoretical discussion immensely useful in reconsidering poetry's place in a democratic public culture."--James Arnt Aune, author of Selling the Free Market

A study of how poetry and discussions of it shape public consciousness, from the socially volatile era of the 1960s to the War on Terror today.