Abstract
This essay explores a notable trend toward issues of social justice and civic engagement in 21st-century book-length poetries, exemplifying Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American lyric (2014) as a text that creates links between socially oriented poetries and forms of civic action and dissent. Using modernist rhetorician Kenneth Burke’s modes of persuasion, attention is given to the specific ways in which Citizen as socially-oriented poetry can encourage readers towards forms of civic engagement. Specifically in relation to linguistic frameworks, this essay also assesses the impact of Citizen in the public sphere, building on scholarship on rhetorical poetries by Rachel Galvin, Dale M Smith, Jeffrey St Onge and Jennifer Moore.
Keywords: Poetry – poetics – rhetoric – social change