American Poets in the 21st Century

Award-winning poet, critic, and activist CLAUDIA RANKINE is the author of five collections of poetry, including Citizen: An American Lyric, and she edits the American Poets in the Twenty-First Century series. She is the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University. MICHAEL DOWDY is the author of Broken Souths: Latina/o Poetic Responses to Neoliberalism and Globalization and Urbilly. He is associate professor of English at the University of South Carolina.

Acknowledgments Introduction by Michael Dowdy ROSA ALCALÁ Poems from Undocumentaries Everybody’s Authenticity Job #6 Autobiography from The Lust of Unsentimental Waters Rita Hayworth: Double Agent Patria from MyOTHER TONGUE Paramour Voice Activation Dear María Poetics Statement Poetics of Not-Mother Tongue Rosa Alcalá’s Aesthetics of Alienation, by John Alba Cutler BRIAN BLANCHFIELD Poems from Not Even Then One First Try and Then Another If the Blank Outcome in Dominoes Adds a Seventh Side to Dice from A Several World According to Herodotus Edge of Water, Nimrod Falls, Montana Pferd Eclogue Onto an Idea from series “The History of Ideas, 1973–2012,” A Several World Education Ut Pictura Poesis Eclogue in Line to View The Clock by Christian Marclay Open House Edge of Water, Moiese, Montana Poetics Statement from “On Abstraction, Permitting Shame, Error and Guilt, Myself the Single Source” In the Dark with Brian Blanchfield, by Chris Nealon DANIEL BORZUTZKY Poems from The Book of Interfering Bodies The Book of Interfering Bodies from In the Murmurs of the Rotten Carcass Economy Decomposition as Explanation Illinois from The Performance of Becoming Human Let Light Shine Out of Darkness The Performance of Becoming Human Poetics Statement the continuum: a broken introduction Pardon Me Mr. Borzutzky / If, by Kristin Dykstra CARMEN GIMÉNEZ SMITH Poems from Odalisque in Pieces Prepartum from Goodbye, Flicker Hungry Office Hans Hated Girls from Milk & Filth (Llorona Soliloquy) (And the Mouth Lies Open) from “Parts of an Autobiography” from Be Recorder from “Post-Identity” Poetics Statement “The Call for Reversal is Native”: The Paradox of the Mother Tongue in the Work of Carmen Giménez Smith, by Joyelle McSweeney ALLISON ADELLE HEDGE COKE Poems from Off-Season City Pipe The Change from Blood Run Skeletons Ghosts Skeletons from Streaming We Were in a World America, I Sing You Back Poetics Statement Quipu: a poetic Resurrecting the Serpent, Reactivating Good Earth: Allison Hedge Coke’s Blood Run, by Chadwick Allen CATHY PARK HONG Poems from Dance Dance Revolution Roles from series “St. Petersburg Hotel,” Dance, Dance Revolution 1. Services Song That Breaks the World Record from Engine Empire Ballad in O Ballad in A Market Forces Are Brighter Than the Sun Notorious Poetics Statement Building Inheritance: Cathy Park Hong’s Social Engagement in the Speculative Age, by Danielle Pafunda CHRISTINE HUME Poems from Musca Domestica A Million Futures of Late from Alaskaphrenia Comprehension Questions Hume’s Suicide of the External World from Shot I Exhume Myself Induction Poetics Statement Hum Utter Wilderness: The Poetry of Christine Hume, by Molly Bendall BHANU KAPIL Poems from The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers from Incubation: A Space for Monsters from Humanimal, a Project for Future Children from Schizophrene from Ban en Banlieue Poetics Statement Perpetual Writing, Institutional Rupture, and the Performance of No: The Poetics of Bhanu Kapil, by Eunsong Kim MAURICIO KILWEIN GUEVARA Poems from Postmortem Postmortem from Poems of the River Spirit A City Prophet Talks to God on the 56C to Hazelwood The Easter Revolt Painted on a Tablespoon from Autobiography of So-and-so: Poems in Prose Self-Portrait Mirror, Mirror A Tongue Is a Rope Bridge The American Flag from POEMA Against Metaphor At rest Pepenador de palabras Poema without hands Poetics Statement Mauricio Kilwein Guevara’s Scavenger Infrapoetics, by Michael Dowdy FRED MOTEN Poems from Hughson’s Tavern Rock the party, fuck the smackdown five points, ten points from B Jenkins gayl jones william parker/fred mcdowell frank ramsay/nancy wilson from The Feel Trio from series block chapel [whenever I listen to cornelius I think of cecily] [welcome to what we took from is the state] from I ran from it and was still in it [I burn communities in shadow, underground, up on the] [I often amount to no more than a stylistics. airrion] [I am foment. I speak blinglish. at work they call me] from The Little Edges the gramsci monument from The Service Porch it’s not that I want to say Poetics Statement Sounding the Open Secret: The Poetics of Fred Moten, by Brent Hayes Edwards CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ Poems from from unincorporated territory [saina] from aerial roots from aerial roots from aerial roots from aerial roots from aerial roots ginen aerial roots from aerial roots ginen aerial roots Poetics Statement Tidal Poetics: The Poetry of Craig Santos Perez, by J. Michael Martinez BARBARA JANE REYES Poems from Poeta en San Francisco [objet d’art: exhibition of beauty in art loft victorian claw tub] [Kumintang] [why choose pilipinas?] [why choose pilipinas, remix] [galleon prayer] [ave maria] [prayer to san francisco de asís] ( zh f l) from Diwata The Bamboo’s Insomnia Polyglot Incantation The Villagers Sing of the Woman Who Becomes a Wave Who Becomes the Water Who Becomes the Wind In the City, a New Congregation Finds Her Aswang Poetics Statement To Decenter English Acts of Poetry in Troubled Times: Barbara Jane Reyes’s Anticolonial Feminist Voicings, by Martin Joseph Ponce ROBERTO TEJADA Poems from Exposition Park Debris in Pink and Black from Full Foreground Untitled [Not a word of my surrounding] Untitled [Impulse in the great organism of terror] from Why the Assembly Disbanded Kill Time Objective Poetics Statement The Acoustic Uncanny Marginal Erotics: Roberto Tejada’s Sexiness, by David Colón EDWIN TORRES Poems from The PoPedology Of An Ambient Language Dirtspeech The Theorist Has No Samba! Barrio/Barrier from Yes Thing No Thing Of Natural Disasters And Love from Ameriscopia And In Trying Viva La Viva from “Dome” Poetics Statement Bodycatch/Mindtrap: No Edge But In Things The Us Is Porous: Edwin Torres in Other Words, by Urayoán Noel Contributors Index