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a
little history
Ammiel Alcalay
edited with a preface by Fred Dewey
UpSet
Press in collaboration with re:public presents: A Special
Series edited by Fred Dewey
Set against
the backdrop of the Cold War, the war in Iraq, and 9/11, a
little history explores the deep politics of memory and
imagination while proposing a new paradigm for American studies.
With preface by editor Fred Dewey, Alcalay’s book places
the work of major figures like Muriel Rukeyser, Charles Olson,
Edward Dorn, Diane di Prima, and Amiri Baraka, in the realm
of resistance and global decolonization to assert the power
of poetry as a unique form of knowledge.
Recognized
by Edward Said as “that rare thing, a gifted prose writer
and poet, and an accomplished intellectual,” Alcalay
brings his blend of autobiographical and investigative scholarship
to bear on this timely and important book of essays.
"His
books are a tool for liberation.”
—Peter Lamborn Wilson
“There
is no one better qualified to explore the meaning of today’s
‘culture wars,’ locally and globally.”
—Amitav Ghosh
“Alcalay
brings to any subject an acute sensitivity to writing and
a
sophisticated understanding of the way politics works to produce
and
maintain literature. . . . Ammiel Alcalay is a unique and
important figure in contemporary world literature.”
—Lynne Tillman
“It
is Ammiel Alcalay’s consistent curiosity, his care concerning
the world in which he lives, his determined, capable mind,
that I value so much. Simply put, he is an indefatigable worker,
and a brilliant one.”
—Robert Creeley
Poet,
novelist, translator, critic, and scholar, Ammiel
Alcalay is deputy chair of the PhD program
in English at the CUNY Graduate Center, and former chair of
Classical, Middle Eastern & Asian Languages & Cultures
at Queens College. He is the founder and general editor, under
the auspices of the PhD program in English and the Center
for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center, of Lost &
Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, and has edited
texts by Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Diane di Prima, and
Joanne Kyger for the series.
Fred
Dewey is a writer, teacher, editor and activist
based in Los Angeles. He directed Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts
Center for fifteen years, from 1995 to 2010, building its
archive, readings, festivals, events, and publications, and
founded Beyond Baroque Books, editing and publishing over
nineteen books and anthologies.
November 2012
7 1/8 x 4 3/4 • 306 pages
$12.95 paper • 978-0-9760142-8-7
Distributed for UpSet Press.
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