'Poetry's Afterlife' wins acclaim, award
The University of Michigan Press is pleased to announce UM Press author and Illinois Poet Laureate Kevin Stein has been chosen as nonfiction runner-up in the Society of Midland Authors Award for books published in 2010.
Stein was recognized for his work, Poetry’s Afterlife: Verse in the Digital Age , released by the University of Michigan Press. At a time when most commentators fixate on American poetry's supposed "death," Stein instead proposes the vitality of its aesthetic hereafter. Poetry's spirited afterlife has come despite, or perhaps because of, two decades of commentary diagnosing American poetry as moribund if not already deceased.
Since his 2003 appointment as Illinois Poet Laureate and his forays into public libraries and schools, Stein has discovered that poetry has not given up its literary ghost. For a fated art supposedly pushing up aesthetic daisies, poetry these days is up and about in the streets, schools, and universities, and online in new and compelling digital forms.
It flourishes among the people in a lively if curious underground existence largely overlooked by national media. Or perhaps the national media is paying attention. Poetry’s Afterlife was recently reviewed by the Chicago Sun Times. You can read the review online or immerse yourself in the second life of poetry by reading the book online through our Digital Cultures imprint.
