In this highly original reexamination of North American poetry in English from Ezra Pound to the present day, Christopher Nealon demonstrates that the most vital writing of the period is deeply concerned with capitalism. This focus is not exclusive to the work of left-wing poets: the problem of capitalism’s effect on individuals, communities, and cultures is central to a wide variety of poetry, across a range of political and aesthetic orientations. Indeed, Nealon asserts, capitalism is the material out of which poetry in English has been created over the last century.
Much as poets of previous ages continually examined topics such as the deeds of King Arthur or the history of Troy, poets as diverse as Jack Spicer, John Ashbery, and Claudia Rankine have taken as their “matter” the dynamics and impact of capitalism―not least its tendency to generate economic and political turmoil. Nealon argues persuasively that poets’ attention to the matter of capital has created a corresponding notion of poetry as a kind of textual matter, capable of dispersal, retrieval, and disguise in times of crisis. Offering fresh readings of canonical poets from W. H. Auden to Adrienne Rich, as well as interpretations of younger writers like Kevin Davies, The Matter of Capital reorients our understanding of the central poetic project of the last century.

The Matter of Capital: Poetry and Crisis in the American Century

Business & Money

Nealon, Christopher

Economics

Harvard University Press

Foundlings: Lesbian and Gay Historical Emotion before Stonewall (Series Q)

What is it like to “feel historical”? In Foundlings Christopher Nealon analyzes texts produced by American gay men and lesbians in the first half of the twentieth century—poems by Hart Crane, novels by Willa Cather, gay male physique magazines, and lesbian pulp fiction. Nealon brings these diverse works together by highlighting a coming-of-age narrative he calls “foundling”—a term for queer disaffiliation from and desire for family, nation, and history.The young runaways in Cather’s novels, the way critics conflated Crane’s homosexual body with his verse, the suggestive poses and utopian captions of muscle magazines, and Beebo Brinker, the aging butch heroine from Ann Bannon’s pulp novels—all embody for Nealon the uncertain space between two models of lesbian and gay sexuality. The “inversion” model dominant in the first half of the century held that homosexuals are souls of one gender trapped in the body of another, while the more contemporary “ethnic” model refers to the existence of a distinct and collective culture among gay men and lesbians. Nealon’s unique readings, however, reveal a constant movement between these two discursive poles, and not, as is widely theorized, a linear progress from one to the other. This startlingly original study will interest those working on gay and lesbian studies, American literature and culture, and twentieth-century history.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Duke University Press Books

What is it like to “feel historical”? In Foundlings Christopher Nealon analyzes texts produced by American gay men and lesbians in the first half of the twentieth century—poems by Hart Crane, novels by Willa Cather, gay male physique magazines, and lesbian pulp fiction. Nealon brings these diverse works together by highlighting a coming-of-age narrative he calls “foundling”—a term for queer disaffiliation from and desire for family, nation, and history. The young runaways in Cather’s novels, the way critics conflated Crane’s homosexual body with his verse, the suggestive poses and utopian captions of muscle magazines, and Beebo Brinker, the aging butch heroine from Ann Bannon’s pulp novels—all embody for Nealon the uncertain space between two models of lesbian and gay sexuality. The “inversion” model dominant in the first half of the century held that homosexuals are souls of one gender trapped in the body of another, while the more contemporary “ethnic” model refers to the existence of a distinct and collective culture among gay men and lesbians. Nealon’s unique readings, however, reveal a constant movement between these two discursive poles, and not, as is widely theorized, a linear progress from one to the other. This startlingly original study will interest those working on gay and lesbian studies, American literature and culture, and twentieth-century history.

History

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Poetry. The poetry of Christopher Nealon is both sensual and intellectual. As Thom Gunn writes in his preface, "Strange appeals are made with strange motivations, by moonlight as it were, but are couched in oddly reasonable terms." The poems of Ecstasy Shield reveal an openly queer sensibility infused with camp and irony, yet capable of disarming seriousness in the face of a culture against desire. An associate professor at UC Berkeley, Nealon lives in San Francisco.

Ecstasy Shield

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Black Square Editions

Poetry. "O suburban / scarification girls / I was bookish too" says this ludic and probing new collection from the author of ECSTASY SHIELD, also available from SPD. A gorgeously designed book by an exciting American poet, the book is not just to be read, it is to behold.

The Joyous Age

History & Criticism

Poetry. As with many books, description of Chris Nealon's latest, fails, yet in this case it also, unusually, falls. A few moments of demonstration rather than description: "nothing you read will help you now"; "I am not gay, I am from the future!"; "Classicism: build your buildings so that even conquering hordes will be like, No way." Plummet is a post-catastrophic work written largely before the current all-American, i.e. global, plunge--imagine a kind of clairvoyant O'Hara distracted by Adorno, and Bear Stearns. It's that pit of the stomach feeling, when plummeting one goes from high to low--that's that pit of the stomach feeling--in the pit, of the stomach. "Will there be sirens? Toxins? I imagine violence miming reconciliation and then back again." The Believer reporter Stephen Burt observed of his previous collection The Joyous Age that "Nealon's bracing and bitter debut both enters and mocks the tradition of kaleidoscopic, difficult poetry as grand social critique, and makes most new work in that mode sound sloppy or bland by contrast." In other words, as it says in this new collection "Lifted from the cadences you know and then let fall.

Plummet

Edge Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Nealon, Christopher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Nealon, Christopher

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Nealon, Christopher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Matter of Capital: Poetry and Crisis in the American Century

Foundlings: Lesbian and Gay Historical Emotion before Stonewall (Series Q)

Foundlings: Lesbian and Gay Historical Emotion before Stonewall (Series Q)

Ecstasy Shield

The Joyous Age

Plummet