Purplish Poetry Anger Publics

"Description: Purplish examines anger in American poetry, while reflecting on the permissible/policed cultural affects of our time. By way of BIPOC and QTPOC poets engaging with negativity--frustration, anger, distress, etc.--José Felipe Alvergue argues that affects that reflect a counternarrative to benevolence challenge the colonial underpinnings of "American publics," as a concept of democratic participation and practice of community. "Purplish" refers to the blend of red and blue political parties, as well as the color of a bruise. The rise of purple regions throughout America have articulated the impossible circumstances of our politics in being accommodated by any previous writing that paints publics in a broad, homogenous brush. These purple politics play out daily within spaces we rely on for shared comfort, and belonging, namely communities and neighborhoods, dinner tables, school board meetings, and social media.