Set against the backdrop of the Cold War, the war in Iraq, and 9/11, A Little History explores the deep politics of memory and imagination while proposing a new paradigm for American Studies. With preface by editor Fred Dewey, Alcalay’s book places the work of major figures like Muriel Rukeyser, Charles Olson, Edward Dorn, Diane di Prima, and Amiri Baraka, in the realm of resistance and global decolonization to assert the power of poetry as a unique form of knowledge. Recognized by Edward Said as “that rare thing, a gifted prose writer and poet, and an accomplished intellectual,” Alcalay brings his blend of autobiographical and investigative scholarship to bear on this timely and important book of essays.

“His books are a tool for liberation.”

—Peter Lamborn Wilson

“There is no one better qualified to explore the meaning of today’s ‘culture wars’, locally and globally.”

—Amitav Ghosh

“Alcalay brings to any subject an acute sensitivity to writing and a sophisticated understanding of the way politics works to produce and maintain literature… Ammiel Alcalay is a unique and important figure in contemporary world literature.”

—Lynne Tillman

“It is Ammiel Alcalay’s consistent curiosity, his care concerning the world in which he lives, his determined, capable mind, that I value so much. Simply put, he is an indefatigable worker, and a brilliant one.”

—Robert Creeley

“In the poems of Jenny Husk the world is a membrane words bounce against and poke into, skating on the scrim then delving below in quick sharp digs of fragment, image, and gut-punch. This work is “river dialogue” and “glare on the surface”

all at once, achieving experiment, a sustained rhetoric, intimacy and political weight in one go. If Van Gogh graffitied “The Starry Night” on an urban wall then broke it apart with a mallet, you might get at something resembling the rough and precious texture of a Husk

poem. Her register is horizon-wide & she jumps its length in a blink: the same stanza holds “rooms of dust” and “harmony,” then enjoins us to “hack the map” and “tag it city-wide.” This is a skateboard train anyone wishing to journey the sidewalk, desert, star, and cerebellum should hop on, presto. I am still traveling.”
-Ana Božicevic, author of “Stars of the Night Commute” (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2010)

Author Bio:
Jenny Husk received an MFA in poetry from the City University of New York, Brooklyn College in 2003. She currently teaches in the English department at Southern Connecticut State University and lives in New Haven with her husband and two children.

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“In the poems of Jenny Husk the world is a membrane words bounce against and poke into, skating on the scrim then delving below in quick sharp digs of fragment, image, and gut-punch. This work is “river dialogue” and “glare on the surface” all at once, achieving experiment, a sustained rhetoric, intimacy and political weight in one go. If Van Gogh graffitied “The Starry Night” on an urban wall then broke it apart with a mallet, you might get at something resembling the rough and precious texture of a Husk poem. Her register is horizon-wide & she jumps its length in a blink: the same stanza holds “rooms of dust” and “harmony,” then enjoins us to “hack the map” and “tag it city-wide.” This is a skateboard train anyone buy cialis online without a prescription wishing to journey the sidewalk, desert, star, and cerebellum should hop on, presto. I am still traveling.”
-Ana Božicevic, author of “Stars of the Night Commute” (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2010)

Author Bio:
Jenny Husk received an MFA in poetry from the City University of New York, Brooklyn College in 2003. She currently teaches in the English department at Southern Connecticut State University and lives in New Haven with her husband and two children.
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