Poetry of the Revolution

"From Marx and Engels' "Communist Manifesto" down to the avant-garde theatre of the present, the manifesto is, as Martin Puchner demonstrates in this dazzling, brilliantly original, and deeply learned book, 'an act of self-foundation and self-creation, ' unique in its exhortation to action, not by means of lofty principles but through its artistic form. In its fusion of the political and the poetic as they coexist in twentieth-century movements from Futurism to Situationism, "Poetry of the Revolution" is one of the few indispensable studies of the avant-garde. In a very crowded field, it stands out, quite simply, as a classic."--Marjorie Perloff, author of "The Futurist Moment" and "The Vienna Paradox"

"Martin Puchner navigates masterfully through the complex interactions between political and aesthetic manifestos. His account of the past, however, is also a call to renew and continue the work of manifestos in the future."--Michael Hardt, coauthor of "Empire and Multitude"

""Poetry of the Revolution" is remarkable for its breadth of scholarship and its poised, authoritative style. It will stand for a long time as an authoritative history and elegant reinterpretation of the manifesto form. Few scholars have sustained a close and equal attention to the historical and formal trajectories of both the political manifesto and the aesthetic manifesto. Puchner does so with great scholarly brio, not only tracing the afterlife of the Communist Manifesto as a world text and a generic pioneer, but also bringing his considerable learning to bear on the forms and fates of a great number of avant-garde manifestos, from 1909 to 1999."--Jed Esty, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, authorof "A Shrinking Island: Modernism and National Culture in England"

"Martin Puchner has written a finely detailed, comparative, and well-researched history of the art manifesto in the twentieth century. "Poetry of the Revolution" makes an important contribution to our understanding of the place of the manifesto in modern culture, and it will be of considerable use not only to students of modern literature but also to students of twentieth-century art more generally."--Vincent Pecora, University of California, Los Angeles, author of "Nations and Identities"