Poetics and Justice in America, Japan, and Taiwan shows how entitlements are implicated in all areas of life-human and nonhuman-that poetry reaches. Through a creative adaptation of Badiou's philosophical framing, this book argues that poetry matters as a form of media particularly suited to integrating diverse fields of knowledge and attention in newspapers, Tweets, and performance as well as volumes of poetry. Recasting intertextuality as more relational than referential, the author argues for the importance of poetry in realizing how social change and ecological justice are bound up in our orientations of affiliation. Each chapter focuses on particular sets of problems engaged by poets in different contexts to various ends in Japan, the US, and Taiwan. Some chapters explore the subtle implications of openly provocative styles, while others question the muted poetic intimations of injustices that are left standing unchanged in the name of aesthetics. Poets and performance artists featured include Amiri Baraka, John Ashbery, Tawara Machi, Rodrigo Toscano, Hung Hung, and John Cage. The author argues for examining poetic expressions in terms of what discursive fusions and affiliations they embody beyond the intimation of good intentions or ironic passing over.

Dean Anthony Brink is professor in the department of foreign languages and literatures at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University.

Poetics and Justice in America, Japan, and Taiwan shows how entitlements are implicated in all areas of life-human and nonhuman-that poetry reaches. Through a creative adaptation of Badiou's philosophical framing, this book argues that poetry matters as a form of media particularly suited to integrating diverse fields of knowledge and attention in newspapers, Tweets, and performance as well as volumes of poetry. Recasting intertextuality as more relational than referential, the author argues for the importance of poetry in realizing how social change and ecological justice are bound up in our orientations of affiliation. Each chapter focuses on particular sets of problems engaged by poets in different contexts to various ends in Japan, the US, and Taiwan. Some chapters explore the subtle implications of openly provocative styles, while others question the muted poetic intimations of injustices that are left standing unchanged in the name of aesthetics. Poets and performance artists featured include Amiri Baraka, John Ashbery, Tawara Machi, Rodrigo Toscano, Hung Hung, and John Cage. The author argues for examining poetic expressions in terms of what discursive fusions and affiliations they embody beyond the intimation of good intentions or ironic passing over.

Introduction: Poetic Configurations and Intertextuality after Badiou and Angenot

Part I: On Ecological Engagement in American Poetry

Chapter 1: Romantic and Anthropocentric Agency in Contemporary American Ecopoetry

Part II: Social and Ecological Criticism in Contemporary Japanese Poetry

Chapter 2: Post-Bubble Satirical Verse in Neoliberal Japan

Chapter 3: Nuclear Hegemony and Material Indices: The Verse Boom after Fukushima

Chapter 4: Tawara Machi's Classical Pop Poetics of Consumerism and Travel

Part III: Settling Scores: Poetry Out of the New York School and Beyond

Chapter 5: Racialization, Sound, and Affiliations of Change in Amiri Baraka's Performance Poetry

Chapter 6: Sun Ra's Chromatic Affirmations: Subtractive Collaboration and Afrofuturism

Chapter 7: Situating Intentionality and Social Critique in the Poetry and Performance of John Cage and Rodrigo Toscano

Chapter 8: The Double Edge of Indifference in John Ashbery's Late Work

Part IV: Poetry of Emergent Communities

Chapter 9: Human Rights and the Arts in Contemporary Taiwan: Hung Hung's Literary and Dramatic Productions

Chapter 10: Precarious Spaces and Intertextual Jouissance in Queer Communities in San Francisco and Tokyo: The Poetry of Justin Chin and Ishii Tatsuhiko