Revolutionary Memory

<p><em>Revolutionary Memory</em> is the most important book yet to be published about the vital tradition of leftwing American Poetry. As <strong>Cary Nelson</strong> shows, it is not only our image of the past but also our sense of the present and future that changes when we recover these revolutionary memories. Making a forceful case for political poetry <em>as</em> poetry, <strong>Nelson</strong> brings to bear his extraordinary knowledge of American poets, radical movements, and social struggles in order to bring out an undervalued strength in a literature often left at the canon's edge. Focused in part of the red decade of the 1930s, <em>Revolutionary</em><em>Memory</em> revitalizes biographical criticism for writers on the margin and shows us for the first time how progressive poets fused their work into a powerful chorus of political voices. Richly detailed and beautifully illustrated with period engravings and woodcuts, <em>Revolutionary Memory</em> brings that chorus dramatically to life and set a cultural agenda for future work.</p> Introduction One: Modern Poems We Have Wanted to Forget 1. A poetry Dossier 2. Establishment Memory and Political poetry 3. The Assault on Langston Hughes 4. Naming Names Two: From the Great Depression to the Red Scare: The Poetry of Edwin Rolfe 1. Poetry as Lived History 2. The Lessons of Spain 3. Poetry Against McCarthyism Three: Poetry Chorus: The Politics of Revolutionary Memory 1. The Community of the Left 2. Tillie Olsen's Sweat Shop Poem 3. Revolution's Collective Voice Poetry Chorus: How Much for Spain? 1. Don Quixote in Prison 2. When Madrid Was the Tomb of Fascism 3. A Lament for Garcia Lorca 4. Exile without End