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POLITICAL SUBJECT

by Caleb Beckwith

Political Subject considers the moral roles available for the good ally, the good leftist comrade, and the good poet doing the “good and necessary” work of poeting their way into the revolution at the frayed edge of the Capitalocene. The spare, bone-dry poems are concerned with language’s utility, querying its potential to exercise any real resistance to its already co-opted status within late capitalism, where identity is merely demographic and monetized, and where political solidarity can be a “shoreline or / shipwreck.” How, the Political Subject wonders, do we really choose to use “nihilism’s/ escape hatch” while enjoying the “imperial air-conditioning?” —Divya Victor

Political Subject is a diagnostic of discourses in the political present, from culture to ideologies to struggles, that constitute us as subjects. Within our permanent crisis, it articulates hundreds of assemblages for constructive becoming, keeping open lines for thinking otherwise. — Brian Ang

The “subject” in Caleb Beckwith‘s new title signifies both content and perspective. Either way, what subject is not “political?” In Political Subject, Caleb Beckwith merges disparate vocabularies to build micro-narratives that ring true, personal, social & what-have-you. Buzzwords from wherever line minimal stanzas, just enough to touch on the weird facts of daily life and be home in time for “burning the candle / at both ends.” These are poems that tell it like it is while also being themselves familiar objects made strange. You’ll come back to them again and again. — Kit Robinson

Caleb Beckwith is a writer and editor living in Oakland, CA; previous works include Heat Win and Hi, You’re Beautiful (Gauss PDF).