Utopias of One Paperback - 2019

"This beautifully written book convincingly redefines the progressive potential of utopian thinking, locating it in a refusal to formulate totalizing programs for the future as well as in an attention to the present and the minute, the fragile and the precarious. Provocatively, Kotin does not spend a lot of time on the standard dismissal of utopianism as apolitical snobbism or aesthetic idealism, and instead detects in poetry forces intense enough to enact utopian successes."--Branka Arsic, Columbia University

"Joshua Kotin identifies an aim--autonomy--common to writers across centuries and continents. His analysis of aesthetic success combines sensitivity to formal dynamics with an acute sense of the social dilemmas form is tasked with resolving. In its broad conceptual architecture, Utopias of One finds a way to integrate the universal, existential dimensions of literature with a sophisticated account of all the forces that constrain it."--Michael W. Clune, author of Writing Against Time

"In elegant and sinewy prose, Kotin presents not so much a cross-national study but something better, a non-national study. Despite the different languages and periods of his iconoclastic authors, Kotin illuminates the work of each and, against all odds, their connection to one another and to us."--Charles Bernstein, author of Pitch of Poetry

"It's a delight to encounter American and Russian poets juxtaposed in this way. Creative, original, and with clear and lively prose, Utopias of One is thoroughly enjoyable."--Brian M. Reed, University of Washington