Left of Poetry

“Compelling. . . . Ehlers proposes a reconsideration of the way in which we understand the politics of poetic forms.”—American Literary History

“This impressive, meticulously researched book makes a substantial contribution to the study of the 'literary left' in depression-era American literary history.”—Journal of American History

“Guided by a historical methodology devoted to archival retrieval, Ehlers salvages a Communist contribution to the lyrical form that recovers conceptions of community, meter, and accessibility. This achievement reveals that what scholars today recognize as conventional writing and reading practices are actually informed by a deeply anti-communist trajectory.”—Against the Current

“Ehlers’s archives come to life most vividly when the interpretive conclusions she infers from context—often the promised payoff of archival scholarship—are not just explanatory but open-ended. Her attention to documentary is . . . the most revelatory part of Ehlers’s return to interwar American poetry.”—Genre

“A fascinating study of left poetry during the Great Depression. A writer with an impressive sensitivity to concrete detail, Sarah Ehlers offers a much-needed reappraisal of radical literature in America during a pivotal era in our nation’s history.”—James Smethurst, author of The African American Roots of Modernism

“Carefully researched and full of highly valuable original archival study, Sarah Ehlers makes an important intervention in genre criticism and provides field-changing readings of poets such as Langston Hughes and his relation to Jacques Roumain, Genevieve Taggard, Muriel Rukeyser, and others. Sure to impact the field of modern American poetry studies, Left of Poetry is an outstanding book.”—Walter Kalaidjian, Emory University