Silence in Contemporary Poetry

This book takes as its primary consideration the relationship between silence, formal innovation, and social justice in recent poetry by women, non-binary writers, and writers of color. It engages examples ranging from dramatic verse to lyric fragments and prose poetry. Given these poets’ commitment to social justice, the readerly possibility in these texts’ gaps and elisions is rife with real-world implications, as the reader’s imaginative work in these texts almost always extends beyond the realm of language, literature, and the arts.