POETRY TALK (no. 3)

There is no future for imperial literary culture.

The Minutemen, “Mutiny in Jonestown”

Last weekend, LitHub published a piece by novelist Viet Than Nguyen entitled “Most American Literature is the Literature of Empire.” The essay is about as good a statement as you’re going to get about literature and politics from a writer of Nguyen’s fame, and it touches precisely on the contradictions that literary people are often at pains to rationalize and ignore. In what follows here, I want to highlight and extend some of his ideas, while also linking them to the ideas brought up in previous posts of this series (“Poetry Talk”).

To start, a few words about literature and empire more broadly. The aggrieved voices in the comments section of Nguyen’s article take his argument to claim that all literary writing in the US is inescapably complicit in empire—in which case, what can you do about it other than quit writing? And of course, this line of thinking is turned to ad hominem¹, leading to a literary version of, “And yet you type this on an iPhone? Hmm, interesting.” Nguyen does make some significant claims about content—asserting “the realism of showing the imperfect domesticity²” as a kind of imperial mode—but beyond the issue of style and content, he helps us think about how a writer or their publications align with institutional literary culture. And as Nguyen argues, the ties between many literary institutions and the imperial state is direct and unequivocal.

This has been an ongoing concern of mine. In an interview about my book Interrogation Days, in conversation with fellow poet Tim Carter, I had the following to say:

Ultimately, poetry and literature are routinely enlisted into [a] nationalist enterprise, and they very often make willing collaborators. Even the private donors and foundations that more frequently fund non-profit small presses in the US expect that presses contribute to what is ultimately a national, state-approved project of building cultural prestige.³

As many know, this goes back to the Cold War and the very origins of creative writing as a field. Often, people latch onto “The CIA created Iowa Writers Workshop!” and that’s as far a they get in their thinking about it. But the argument, again, is not that every one who has gotten an MFA is an imperial drone, but that the infrastructure of literary culture is shaped by a historical, material relationship to the state and sources of private wealth—and that these entities are cutting checks in pursuit of a political agenda, however benign it may sometimes appear. This picture is rounded out further in an essay I wrote about Amy Paeth’s recent study of the poet laureate program, which seeks to refashion poets as ambassadors of empire’s supposed democratic ideals⁴. Checks are cashed, promo copy is written up, and the vocabulary that ties contemporary poetry to the project of American empire is formalized—and often, we don’t really see it for what it is.

The point, then, for me, has been to ask writers to question their ties to these institutions and the money they dispense. But really, the time for such questioning was probably around 2000, as the the non-profit, institutional literary world has since become deeply entangled. And now, here in 2025, we’re at an altogether new conjuncture. For as Nguyen argues, this soft power infrastructure is threatened by a Trump administration aggressively uninterested in the cultural diplomacy⁵ such institutions enact. As Nguyen asserts, Trump focuses only on hard power: coercion and violence, not persuasion and hegemony. Further, Nguyen argues, this threat to literary institutions leaves many in a strange—and bankrupt—position of longing for the former, polite face that was draped over the imperial war machine. He characterizes the present “dilemma of American literature” thusly:

[D]issenting against Trump and what he represents but not recognizing that Trump’s imperialism is a more naked version of liberal imperialism is a limited kind of dissent. Instead, such minor dissent will be American literature fulfilling its imperial function, which is to fine-tune imperial power through showing the literary and liberal values of empathy and compassion, and in so doing to be empire’s diplomat.

Empire’s diplomat. To me, this diplomacy is not even primarily about the content one may present in their writing, especially for poets whose work does not circulate at the mass level of many novels; rather, it is often a quite literal and material function. Being “empire’s diplomat” is the deal that a large segment of the non-profit, funding-dependent literary world has cut with the empire for several decades: consent to perform cultural diplomacy, however indirectly or unobtrusively, and establish soft power in exchange for funding⁶. There is the further assumption that the values of the state align with those of “the literary community” on most of the salient points—namely, “the literary and liberal values of empathy and compassion.” And this in itself is questionable. This is the neoliberal poetic culture I spoke of before—what Paeth also calls “state verse culture”—and the gamble taken in this culture is that this contradiction is sustainable and ultimately good for poetry and poets, or at least not harmful.⁷ And in some contexts, this might be the case! (Contradictions cut both ways, after all⁸ [key footnote here]). But to my mind, as seemingly to Nguyen’s, we live in a moment when all this is up for serious audit.

For many prior to 2025, this audit already arrived. More specifically, the contradiction became thoroughly unsustainable in the aftermath of October 7^th 2023. The genocide in Palestine exposed the neoliberal lie about the imperial role of literature and its institutions, and for those people there is no turning back, and those who saw this came to feel that opposition is the only justifiable position. Others tried to hold a middle ground, while still more embraced the imperial/Zionist position. Writing of this moment, Nguyen says:

The contemporary American literary world is in disarray as a result. While many writers are sympathetic to Palestinians, many of their literary institutions have been flummoxed, unable to support Palestinians, name genocide, or use the active voice to identify Israeli agency, even as many writers demand that they do. These literary institutions are a part of empire, supported by the state or by powerful donors who benefit from the imperial machinery.

When it becomes clear that one’s funding, professional relationships, funding, and cultural status are only viable to the extent you excuse a genocide, then the mask has truly fallen. You see the real stakes. And for some, it becomes frightening just how throughly networked and entangled all literary entities seem to be, making it difficult to draw lines anywhere without alienating and offending. And some folks just resign to a vaguely compromised position, entangled within a world that leads to constant crises and fall-outs and hand-wringing. As such, there is an indirect, psycho-social discipline at work here in addition to the more direct and overt influence.

Ultimately, I think the key insight of Nguyen’s essay is that the same contradiction exposed by Palestine is being further exacerbated by the likelihood of Trump’s defunding of soft power institutions. That is, real historical forces are coming to bear on literary culture in ways that insist on waking us up to material, economic factors. And we fail this moment when we allow the focus on Trump, and what may come in the future, to distract from what Palestine has revealed—and to see the common link here. Once the mask has started to come loose, and we see the violence behind it, does an honest person rush to put the mask back in place again? No, surely not. What does it mean, then, when the Trump admin proceeds to fully tear the mask off? We sure as hell don’t salute him, but we’d be fools to imagine we could simply set things back to “normal.” And so, this moment puts an end to world-structuring illusions that have held US society together for decades, and its hegemonic literary culture is no exception.

With things so radically in question, all the lines are being redrawn. And this is why I keep pointing to counterculture—that that is what we should desire for ourselves and our art. Divest from the dying institutional culture, with its imperial ties, and find new psychic energy with which to endure within whatever is coming our way. (Hats off to the many of you who have already done so, or who were never invested in the first place, and to those of you who have educated me along the way.) As I’ve said in this series before, I take it almost as an article of faith that imagination, liberation, and the truth depend on one another. One thing we are denied by institutional, neoliberal poetic culture is a sense of truth: a sense of being informed and autonomous makers of our own culture—we’re always rationalizing shit and shaking hands with the wrong people. And in turn, this makes one less free as an artist, and it makes one less free to speak the truth at a time when the very conditions for truth are being annihilated by fascists.

I need to draw to a close here. But lastly, let me say: I dislike that this line of critique sometimes sounds like scolding. I dislike the puritanism and super-ego that it can lead to. I mean, much of the effect of this argument is to inhibit and constrict—to recoil from institutions and grow suspicious and critical. It can even begin to seem anti-social, and I think about this a lot⁹. But to me, that is only a surface aspect of it, and beneath it there is desire for a new, affirming psychic energy—a new social energy. I mean, I write this to help people, including myself, think their own stuff through and to figure out how to move forward in a more meaningful and true relationship to art and politics. And yes, all of this is complex: contradictions cut both ways, there are degrees of severity, and perfection is not to be expected. Moreover, at the end of the day, we’re living under capitalism and most of us can’t afford the rent. But that’s just it: because we’re all so tired and scattered, and it’s all so entangled, it’s very easy to settle for sleepwalking and “just focusing on the page.” But at some point, these issues have to come up, and decisions have to get made about where one stands, and this compels me to follow out this line of critique even when I grow (very) weary of it. And so I’m grateful for an essay like Nguyen’s, not only for its unique insights, but because it makes it easier to lean into saying the thing once again.

OK I’m ending this one. Until next time,

<3

1. I am not here to endorse or defend Nguyen’s career. Honestly, I don’t know much about him and have not read his novels. At first glance, he is about as thoroughly immersed in the institutional world as one could possibly be, but perhaps he is that extremely rare case of one who finds a way to use such a platform for oppositional ends. Or perhaps there is some way his critique is being recuperated in real time. Alternately, perhaps he is someone who may soon be targeted by the Trump admin. I don’t know, and I don’t know enough to have an opinion on him—but I find the statements within this particular essay to be very useful.

2. The full quote here is worth including here: “American literature as imperial literature does not make that connection [between Palestinian genocide and our own racist domestic policies] which reveals that the lining of the American Dream is a surreal nightmare for many people inside and outside the empire. An imperial literature prefers the realism of showing the imperfect domesticity within an American empire. This act of showing constitutes a low-level dissent that can be promoted by President Obama in his annual list of recommended books, which flatters writers and provides a literary sheen that obscures Obama’s extensive use of drone assassinations and deportation of undocumented migrants. But even that minimal dissent cannot to be tolerated under Trump II, where ideas like diversity, anti-racism, and other core themes of Obama-sanctioned literature are outlawed.”

3. Juliana Spahr’s book, Du Bois’s Telegram, has been an important resource shaping my understanding here.

4. Seriously, please read this essay if you want to see the full extent of this stuff, as it offers more concrete specifics than this particular post has room for.

5. In fact, an article I have often cited about poetry as diplomacy, posted on the US State Department’s web page, has been taken down in recent weeks. Clearly, the new rulers don’t give a shit for art, even when it does empire’s bidding. A very different world is emerging here.

6. Again, as Paeth argues, this ideologically motivated funding comes from a hybrid of the private and public sectors—it’s not just about NEA.

7. And if you want to see this neoliberal poetic culture in full flower, just take a look at 2017’s “Renga for Obama.”

8. This is probably the thorniest part of thinking all this through. The situation is dialectical, containing both the liberatory aspects of poetry and the conservative (even repressive) aspects of institutional organization. Generally speaking, to insist entirely on one aspect or the other is to oversimplify, and such simplifications can lead to all kinds of errors. However, when the two sides of the dialectic begin to agree in the promotion of a unified ideology—as we see explicitly in much of the poet laureate agenda (see Paeth)— we have to question this and criticize it as a kind of institutional capture. Further, when the institutions begin to discipline the field of poetry through professionalization, things change even further. And this is what I see: a culture that has a high degree of institutional capture in which lines frequently blur between those who resist this and those who happily embrace it. Redrawing these lines in the creation of a counterculture outside of this capture is, to my mind, the way to go.

9. This may be a subject for the next Poetry Talk.