Most poetry pays poorly, and so most of the institutions that have developed to facilitate its production and distribution in the United States have served as patrons, insulating poets from the need to earn money directly from the publication of their poems. In the first third of the twentieth century this patronage was largely private, as wealthy individuals such as John Quinn and Scofield Thayer subsidized modernist poets such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, for both prestige and, ultimately, profit in the form of limited and signed editions that would in turn enable the emergence of a collector’s market. Inherited wealth also formed the basis of modernist publishing, as the “new breed” of American publishers such as Horace Liveright and James Laughlin used family funds to finance their ventures, again frequently producing limited editions that would ultimately accrue value in the collector’s market even as they functioned as prestigious loss leaders in the mainstream literary marketplace.

In April 1917, Woodrow Wilson’s call for a declaration of war – “The world must be made safe for democracy” – enshrined liberal-democratic nation-building as central to the US military mission, conceivably extended to every nation on earth (Tooze 9). Such sentiments might be credited with inspiring the most voluminous outpouring of prowar poetry in American literary history. Yet under the idealistic veneer Wilson’s aim was no less than US hegemony in a world capitalist system, in which “political liberty” would promote an open global marketplace that the United States could dominate (Dayton 15). This contradiction between Wilsonian ideal and reality catalyzed, in turn, a body of trenchant antiwar poetry. Broadly speaking, this minority report has become the pattern for most American poetry of war and peace written ever since, which has sought to debunk the recurring fantasy that, in American hands, war might become an instrument of peace and liberation. Yet this largely antiwar trajectory has remained largely at the cultural margins, only under exceptional circumstances speaking for the political mainstream.

If poetry is the imperfect approximation of ungovernable forces and feelings, a revolt from within and against the distribution of the sensible, there will have always been something poetic about revolutionary possibility in the United States. And yet American poetry has often understood social revolution as an alien phenomenon, a foreign concept in the most literal sense of that term. When Walt Whitman pressed for “quenchless, indispensable fire” with his “Songs of Insurrection,” he only did so with thoughts cast far away from home and to Paris in the year of its Commune. “Then courage!” we read in his 1871 cluster. “European revolter! revoltress!” (632).

One of the most immediate ways to query the political stakes of poetry is to consider the context in which one encounters a poem. Take for instance Abel Meeropol’s antilynching poem “Strange Fruit.” In the 1937 issue of the Marxist labor magazine New Masses the work is an article of working-class allyship and protest, whereas the more popular musical rendition, recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939, underscores the elegiac quality of the work, emphasizing a connection between jazz and Black folk traditions of social mourning. In certain instances, poems use extraliterary markers to indicate the circumstantial conditions out of which they arise; these are commonly referred to as framing devices. In his succinct comment on “The Literary Frame,” John Frow defines the frame as the material and immaterial border that “surrounds a text and defines its specific [literary] status and the kinds of use to which it can be put” (26). The frame includes the material boundaries of the books’ two covers, the blank space encircling the text and even the silence that marks the start and conclusion of a public reading. But it also includes the immaterial boundaries that communicate the generic and historical particularity of a given work, thus generating what Hans Robert Jauss has called our horizons of expectation. These horizons are cued by such seemingly extra-literary elements as the poem’s date of composition (occasionally stamped at the bottom of the page), the author’s name, the work’s title, the publishing house, as well as the dedicatory material. Taken together these inscriptive settings carry major implications for how we derive meaning. Yet we often overlook them in our rush to privilege content. When accepted uncritically, the frame fulfills its principle duty, to present the separation of literature from everyday life as uncontested and natural. Like any border concept – silence, for instance – when we pay attention to the frame, the ideological biases constructing the border come into view. Each framing occasion provides the receiver with the opportunity to consider the occluded relationships of production and exchange that underpin the creation and reception of a poem. Attending to the frame acknowledges the poem as an ongoing series of events, with each iteration carrying the potential to reroute its meaning. It is for this reason that practitioners of socially attuned innovative poetries have made it a perennial habit to call attention to the frame in order to relax its authority.

Claudia Rankine’s fifth book, Citizen: An American Lyric (2014), a volume of poetry and also a New York Times bestseller in the nonfiction category, represents her evolving use of form from lyric toward multiple genres and media. Her first book, Nothing in Nature Is Private (1992), utilizes the individual, lyric poem; thereafter, The End of the Alphabet (1998) expands into lyric sequences. PLOT (2001) employs multiple genres, including fragment, lyric, dialogue, prose, and boxes of text. The first of her “American Lyric” pairing, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric (2004), is also the first volume to include a wide variety of visual images, employing parataxis as a mode to activate meaning in the “gaps” between individual elements. While her previous books explore individual identities within the context of the social, with Citizen, Rankine sought to more explicitly take poetry into public conversations, shaping discussion of racial inequality. Indeed, Citizen has held a spot on the public stage since its release.

Because most African American poetry imagines social pasts, presents, and futures, most of this verse can be described as political poetry. What Cary Nelson says of political poets in general applies to many African American poets in particular: “historical contingency,” the mutability of society, “is the very marrow of their work” (5). From the beginning of the twentieth century to the 1960s, African American political poetry was often engaged with the southern Jim Crow regime that rose after the end of Reconstruction and with this regime’s northern counterpart, some features of which survive today in ostensibly race-neutral law and institutional practice. With the rise of Jim Crow came new Black institutions, among them literary magazines (e.g., The Colored American Magazine, The Voice of the Negro, The Horizon, and The Crisis) and literary societies (e.g., the Bethel Literary and Historical Association and the Boston Literary and Historical Association), and many of the new Black cultural institutions opened spaces where Black intellectuals could resist Jim Crow.

As the environmental crisis has worsened in recent decades, hundreds of American poets have addressed it in their writing, bringing attentiveness, precision, and tenderness toward existence to bear against the failure of the imagination that has led us to the brink of environmental catastrophe. This essay cannot begin to do justice to the plenitude and variety of contemporary, politically engaged ecopoetry; instead, I will focus on three major poets writing in this vein: Camille Dungy, Brenda Hillman, and Craig Santos Perez. They and their work are quite different from each other. Yet all three are environmental activists for whom poetry is not separate from political engagement and awareness of the ways in which colonialism, postcolonialism, and industrialism have exploited both humans and nature.

The chapter deals with the ICJ and human rights. It argues that, while the Court is not and will never be a specialised human rights court, it has a significant role in the protection and development of human rights. The author explains some structural obstacles and impediments to the engagement of the Court with human rights, and then offers some instances of substantial incorporation of human rights into the fabric of general international law through interpretation and legal concepts encompassing international community interests. The chapter suggests that structural disengagement in the sense of norms allowing only States to litigate before the Court does not impede substantial incorporation which may depend on other factors, including the changing attitudes of the ICJ judges and lawyers before the Court.

This chapter examines the institutional context of the Court. It focuses first on the Court’s function as a court, i.e. as the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. It then considers the Court’s relations with States, as an international court. Finally, he considers the Court’s institutional grounding as an organ of the United Nations, and examines its relationship with the United Nations. Professor Ginsburg argues that there is a gap between the Court’s formal institutional structures and its actual operation in practice, and emphasises in particular the way in which the Court has taken a central role in the development of international law.

This chapter considers the ICJ and territorial disputes, an area where the Court has had significant scope to consider the applicable law in multiple cases. The authors identify three areas in which the Court has made a significant contribution to the law on territorial disputes: first, the reconceptualisation of the rules of international law governing the acquisition of territorial sovereignty; second, the clarification of the territorial implications of the fundamental principles of international law; and finally, the elaboration of a clear and coherent method for the legal settlement of territorial disputes, the core of which rests on respect for the principle of legality.

This chapter addresses the Court’s jurisdiction in contentious cases and its jurisdiction in advisory opinions, using specific examples from the Court’s judgments and opinions. It considers whether a novel approach is needed to confer on the Court compulsory jurisdiction across a wider range of disputes.

This chapter examines specific aspects of the Court’s procedure in contentious cases. The authors focus on the key features of procedure: the institution of proceedings; provisional measures; preliminary objections; intervention; and non-appearance. For each of these aspects of procedure, the authors set out the current rules and practice, commenting on the way in which they have evolved, and making some suggestions for further innovation by the Court. They note that there have been recent calls urging he Court to codify aspects of its practice on procedural issues into generally applicable rules. While this might seem an attractive approach, the authors argue that this has the potential to unduly restrict the way in which the Court addresses cases – each of which may have its own particular procedural needs. They emphasise the need for the Court not to be overly prescriptive, but to ensure that it retains power to ensure a fair and just outcome in each particular case.

The chapter considers the contribution of the ICJ to the law of the sea, highlighting four areas where the Court has made a key contribution to the development of the law: maritime delimitation cases, the status of islands and rocks, navigational rights in straits and lastly, the conservation of natural resources. The author notes that the Court’s influence is not equal in all of these areas, but emphasises the significant rule that the Court has played in developing the principles and rules of international law applicable to maritime boundary delimitations.

This chapter on fact-finding and expert evidence considers how the Court has treated competing evidentiary claims, and how it engages in a fact-finding process, looking at the evolution of the Court’s process in this regard. The author evaluates the significant criticism that has been directed against the Court in respect of its approach to fact-finding and the ways in which the Court has begun to address those criticisms.

The chapter examines the ICJ’s contribution to the law on the use of force. The author considers the Court’s case law on the prohibition of the use of force and its potential exceptions, most notably the law on individual and collective self-defence. He identifies the main conceptualisations, inconsistencies, disagreements, and limitations of the Court’s opinions, arguing that although the Court initially had a significant influence, it has faded significantly over the years as a result of what appears to be a conscious or strategic decision of its judges.

The chapter deals with the role of the ICJ in the development of international law from both a doctrinal and a practical perspective. It considers concrete examples of the way in which the Court’s judgments and opinions have had an influence on the development of international law, and it concludes that the Court has in practice had a significant impact on the development of international law, even though that goes beyond its core mandate.

The ICJ’s contribution to the law on jurisdictional immunities is elucidated by Professor Roger O’Keefe. He argues that, through its case law in this area, the ICJ has affirmed basic aspects of the international law of jurisdictional immunities, clarified a few more specific points, and variously crystallised, consolidated, and catalyzed the further development of important customary rules on controversial issues in relation to civil and criminal proceedings respectively. Through its work in this field, the Court has reasserted an orthodox, possibly conservative vision of the role of jurisdictional immunities in the international legal order.

This chapter describes the working practices of the Court, and the reforms made to increase the speed of cases, as well as to improve the processes. The author notes that the Court has demonstrated significant agility in its more recent amendments to the Rules to take account of the worldwide pandemic, and argues that there is evidence to suggest that the Court is becoming more assertive, moving away from its traditionally high level of deference to States.

The chapter considers the ICJ’s contribution to the law of State responsibility, looking back to the Court’s contribution to the codification of that law by the ILC: looking at the Court’s current attitude to the ILC’s Articles on State Responsibility; and looking to the future, addressing one of the main challenges facing the Court in this field, that of multilateral disputes. The author concludes that the Court has been an important player in this field of international law, and it has made a significant contribution to vesting the ILC Articles with the authority they have today. According to this chapter, the Court has an important role to play going forwards in the growth and development of community interest litigation for the enforcement of erga omnes obligations.