Author Archives: Nick Bromell

About Nick Bromell

Nick Bromell received a B.A. in Classics and Philosophy from Amherst College and a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Stanford University. He was the founding editor of The Boston Review, where he continues to be a contributing editor; he also serves on the editorial board of The Sixties and as an advisory editor to the Class: Culture series published by the University of Michigan Press. He has been President of the New England American Studies Association, and he is the principal convener of Democratic Vistas: An Interdisciplinary Seminar in Political Theory and Cultural Studies. (http://democraticvistas.wordpress.com/) Nick Bromell’s primary research seeks to reconfigure conventional understanding of U.S. intellectual history by demonstrating that works of literature and popular culture can be expressions of philosophy and political theory. His publications reflect his particular interest in bridging the gap between academic discourse and public debate. He is the author of By the Sweat of the Brow: Literature and Labor in Antebellum American Culture (University of Chicago Press, 1992) and Tomorrow Never Knows: Rock and Psychedelics in the 1960s (University of Chicago Press, 2000). 

His articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in American Quarterly, American Literature, American Music, The Boston Review, Harper's, The Boston Globe, The Sewanee Review, The Georgia Review, Fortune, The New York Times, New England Monthly, and on-line at Exquisite Corpse and Salon. Nick Bromell’s most recent book, Black and More than Black: African-American Imaginings of U.S. Democracy, will be published by Oxford University Press in February 2013. Parts of this work have appeared, or are forthcoming, in American Literature, American Literary History, The American Scholar, Raritan, and Political Theory.

Relections on Dawn Lundy Martin’s “Negrotizing in Five: Or, How to Write a Black Poem”

Posted on by
15

This semester we’ve read a number of poems that reflect upon what poetry is, what poetry does, and why and how to write (and read) poetry.

Last week we read Dawn Lundy Martin’s “Negrotizing in Five: Or, How to Write a Black Poem,” which obviously deals with these kinds of questions about poetry yet puts some new issues on the table.

It’s not an easy poem to grasp right away, so this week we’re focusing on parts of it and writing speculatively on what each of these parts might be about. When we have assembled and read these fragmentary interpretations, we’ll see if we’ve arrived collectively at a more complete understanding of the entire poem.

 

Poetry and Racism

Posted on by
2

For the past two years I’ve considered getting a blog like this up and running for English 375: American Poetry, but it took a recent incident of racist hatred to push me to action.

I regularly teach Countee Cullen’s poem “Incident” in the section of the course titled “When Something Happens.” This year I was planning for us to read it in Week Ten, which is about two weeks from now.

But because we have experienced a similar incident here at UMass, I’m hoping we can start reading this poem, thinking about it, and writing about the issue it addresses right away.

The great poet W.H. Auden famously remarked that “poetry makes nothing happen.” The question I put before you now is: “in the face of racism, can poetry make anything happen – and if so, what?” Responses may take the form of prose or poetry – whatever feels right to you.