Poetry's Publics and Counterpublics
This panel invites discussion on how poets have negotiated the construction of publics and counterpublics in our loosely defined contemporary moment. While writers have long been interested in the genre’s ability to foment and critique the production of virtual and actual modes of togetherness, we aim to address poetry’s engagements with collectivity after the rise of mass media and the opening up of political and aesthetic representation to diverse identities and electorates that defined the postwar period in the United States. What kinds of social bodies can texts and politics produce in this realm? What does the study of poetry reveal about historical shifts in the ways collectivity gets experienced and conceptualized?