Unlimited Eligibility?

Reviews / Votes

"Unlimited Eligibility? offers a highly original approach to American poetry, tracking the relationship between lyric form and sociopolitical recognition, from Walt Whitman to Claudia Rankine. Assembling a cohort of poets rarely studied together, Ryan Cull shows how American poetry both engages with and refutes Hegelian ideas and practices of recognition, whereby two parties mutually recognize one another and themselves as free and equal persons. Cull performs deft close readings of well-known and understudied poems, showing how poets have engaged directly with Hegel's work, assimilated broader ideas about the political value of recognition, and questioned its potential as a means to achieve justice." - Sarah Dowling, author of Here Is a Figure: Grounding Literary Form

"Unlimited Eligibility? is intellectually compelling, challenging, and timely. One sees many contemporary aesthetic and political discussions of the value and/or danger of poets' and the poetry market's focus on 'identity'-discussions that bear further consideration of the ideals of recognition and representation in democratic politics. In doing this critical work, Ryan Cull's book promises to serve as a touchpoint for many future scholars." - Gillian White, author of Lyric Shame: The "Lyric" Subject of Contemporary American Poetry