The University of Iowa Press will release two new volumes of literary scholarship this month -- "12 x 12: Conversations in 21st-Century Poetry and Poetics" and "History Matters: Contemporary Poetry on the Margins of American Culture".

"12 x 12," edited by Christina Mengert and Joshua Marie Wilkinson, assembles the views of 24 poets through their one-on-one pairings. UI Writers' Workshop faculty member Cole Swensen wrote, "'12 x 12' is truly representative of the best in early 21st-century poetry. Because the poets, both younger and older, are particularly socially and intellectually dynamic, Mengert and Wilkinson's volume presents poetry as socially and politically relevant and underscores the potential for poets to be important thinkers in society. The conversations show that poets think about much more than poetry itself and that their work is crucially informed by contemporary events, philosophy, and the realities of daily life."

Ira Sadoff's "History Matters" argues that poets live and write within history, and that our artistic values always reflect attitudes about both literary history and culture at large. By tracking key contemporary poets -- including John Ashbery, Olena Kalytiak Davis, Louise Glück, Czeslaw Milosz, Frank O'Hara and C. K. Williams -- as well as musing on jazz and other creative enterprises, he investigates the lively poetic art of those who have grappled with late 20th-century attitudes about history, subjectivity, contingency, flux and modernity. Read more...