The Story of an Anthology: “Conjunctures in a Disjunctive Society?”

Abstract

It is said that in the years 2000 + 20, literature has rejected depth for surface; at least in ‘New World’ societies of shallow tradition. From the United States, we hear that the sign of the times is “reality hunger”, an aesthetic not of exploration, but of affect; a structure not of intricate plot, but of plotlessness; of facts that eclipse imagination.If serious fiction is outsold by nonfiction, genre fiction and self-help books, what might be ‘fiction's response’? I turn to the minority form of the fictional repertoire – poetry – to ask: might poetry suggest a contract between fiction's response and the society?