21 | 19: Contemporary Poets and the North American Nineteenth-Century, edited by Kristen Case and Alexandra Manglis
Nonfiction

21 | 19

Contemporary Poets in the Nineteenth-Century Archive
By
Alexandra Manglis and Kristen Case
“Editors Kristen Case and Alexandra Manglis suggest the ways poetry might be both agitator and balm in times of social crisis, as thirteen poets write about topics such as Poe and race, gun violence, and the Black pastoral.” —POETS & WRITERS
Select Format

The nineteenth century is often viewed as a golden age of American literature, a historical moment when national identity was emergent and ideals such as freedom, democracy, and individual agency were promising, even if belied in reality by violence and hypocrisy. The writers of this “American Renaissance”—Thoreau, Fuller, Whitman, Emerson, and Dickinson, among many others—produced a body of work that has been both celebrated and contested by following generations.

As the twenty-first century unfolds in a United States characterized by deep divisions, diminished democracy, and dramatic transformation of identities, this singular book asks a dozen North American poets to engage with texts by their predecessors in ways that avoid both aloofness from the past and too-easy elegy. The resulting essays dwell provocatively on the border between the lyrical and the scholarly, casting fresh critical light on the golden age of American literature and exploring a handful of texts not commonly included in its canon.

A polyvocal collection that reflects the complexity of the cross-temporal encounter it enacts, 21|19 offers a re-reading of the “American Renaissance” and new possibilities for imaginative critical practice today.

ISBN
9781571313775
Publish Date
Pages
232
Dimensions
6 × 8.5 × 0.75 in
Weight
12.2 oz
Cover Art
Reader's Guide
Author

Alexandra Manglis

Alexandra Manglis is a coeditor of 21 | 19: Contemporary Poets in the Nineteenth-Century Archive. She is also a writer and and cofounder of the experimental poetry magazine Wave Composition. Her work has appeared in The Millions, the Times Literary Supplement, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Strange Horizons. She is a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop and holds a DPhil in English from the University of Oxford. She lives in Nicosia, Cyprus.

Author

Kristen Case

Kristen Case is a coeditor of 21 | 19: Contemporary Poets in the Nineteenth-Century Archive. She is also the author of American Pragmatism and Poetic Practice: Crosscurrents from Emerson to Susan Howe, as well as two collections of poems, Little Arias and Principles of Economics. She is also coeditor of Thoreau at 200: Essays and Reassessments and director of Thoreau’s Kalendar: A Digital Archive of the Phenological Manuscripts of Henry David Thoreau. She teaches at the University of Maine at Farmington, where she is director of the New Commons Project.

Praise and Prizes

  • “[These essays] plumb the traditional American canon—and significant texts on its periphery—to contend with the questions of national ethos and identity that resound today. Editors Kristen Case and Alexandra Manglis suggest the ways poetry might be both agitator and balm in times of social crisis, as thirteen poets write about topics such as Poe and race, gun violence, and the Black pastoral.”

    Poets & Writers

  • “Displaying a sophisticated sense of poetics as well as a good grasp of history and its implications for the present moment … [the editors] have done a remarkable job of bringing together such a challenging collection.”

    Harvard Review

    You Might Enjoy

    Based on this book, we recommend you try…
    Nonfiction

    The Salt Stones

    Helen Whybrow

    In the heart of Vermont’s Green Mountains, Helen Whybrow and her partner are presented with the opportunity to steward a two-hundred-acre conserved farm. Whybrow knows that “belonging more than anything requires participation” and radically…

    Nonfiction

    The Science of Last Things

    Ellen Wayland-Smith

    “Offering a deeply necessary, clear-eyed look at who we are as flesh-and-bone bodies during the climate crisis, this is a book that searches and finds meaning in both the hard truths and the value of wonder.”—Ada Limón

    In this luminous collection of…

    Nonfiction

    The Quickening

    Elizabeth Rush

    An astonishing, vital book about Antarctica, climate change, and motherhood from the author of Rising, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.