Unlimited Eligibility?: Inclusive Democracy and the American Lyric

Rewrites the dominant narrative of the political work of lyric poetry in the United States since the nineteenth century.

What if increased visibility of marginalized identities-a goal of much socially committed lyric poetry in the United States-does not necessarily lead to increased social recognition? For many contemporary scholars, this is the central question of lyric politics.Unlimited Eligibility? revisits and deeply historicizes this question. Ryan Cull explores the relationship of a diverse set of poets, including Walt Whitman, Jean Toomer, Hart Crane, James Merrill, Thylias Moss, and Claudia Rankine, to a series of movements intended to build inclusion: the St. Louis Hegelians, cultural pluralism, identity politics, and multiculturalism. In tracing the tensions in lyric poetry's merger with the pursuit of recognition, Cull offers a new history of the political work of lyric poetry while exposing the discursive roots of the nation's faltering progress toward becoming a more inclusive democracy.