The Revolutionary Imagination: The Poetry and Politics of John Wheelwright and Sherry Mangan

In this study of two neglected New England poets, Alan Wald challenges the literary culture that has obscured the radical and Marxist heritage of American letters in our century. “Simply by aspiring to accurate historical remembrance,” Wald writes, “this book aims to subvert the currently sanctified canon of letters and the vision of society legitimized by its codification.”

John Wheelwright (1897–1940) and Sherry Mangan (1904–1961) were Harvard-educated, avant-garde poets in the 1920s. Infl...