Saturday, August 25, 2007

pre-publication praise

My new book, Counter-revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60 is being published by the University of North Carolina Press in November or December. Here's an early response from Alan Wald, author of The New York Intellectuals and many other books:

Counter-revolution of the Word is a magnificent feat of archival research, sensitive to ironic and contrary strains within adversarial political and cultural camps. Alan Filreis brilliantly troubles all previous narratives of the fate of modern U.S. poetry in the Cold War era by vivifying forgotten poems, reviews, and scholarly books, as well as scrutinizing literary debates, correspondence, and thwarted careers. This is a rare, distinctive and landmark model of original scholarship that dialogically addresses major as well as minor writers with wit and a personal voice.