“In this generous and engaging book, the capstone of an informal trilogy, Ramazani further widens our gaze and clears up our confusion about poetry’s part in an interconnected world. Each chapter takes up one of the current topics within our broad discussion of globalism, summarizing critical debates with a clear-eyed and nuanced argument of its own that pushes beyond dichotomies. As always, Ramazani develops his claims through targeted close readings that return us to the joy and utility of reading poetry.”
— Bonnie Costello, Boston University
“In Poetry in a Global Age, Ramazani demonstrates just how much scholars of world literature have missed by taking their bearings primarily from narrative. The book draws on an almost unbelievably wide swath of reading in scholarly fields, including world history, ecological theory, linguistics, the social science literature on globalization, studies of tourism and war, and debates over form and translation. Poetry in a Global Age will be necessary reading for virtually everyone thinking and writing about English-language poetry and comparative poetics.”
— Nathan Suhr-Sytsma, Emory University
"Ramazani’s insight in Poetry in a Global Age is especially astute and timely: poetry is important and flourishing precisely because of its global perspective. . . . Among the book’s many merits are the close readings which, teeming from its dense pages, are uniformly insightful. Ramazani is either introducing us to poets who deserve a wider audience and showing us why. . . or reconceiving some aspect of long-studied figures with a fresh angle or a new context."
— Time Present: The Newsletter of the International T. S. Eliot Society
"Over the past two decades [Ramazani] has shown how we might think transnationally and translocally about poetry. Much literature in the area concentrates on the novel, as critics assume that poetry is more integrally tied to particular traditions. If the real world is globalised, then, so the logic goes, since the novel incorporates larger tranches of that world, it must deal more immediately with globalism. This perhaps demonstrates the shortcomings of such critics than any shortcoming in the genre of poetry. . . Ramazani leaves no doubt that the genre can easily keep pace with the novel. . . Ramazani exemplifies what is best in transnational literary criticism."
— Justin Quinn, Dublin Review of Books
"One of the great contributions of the book is its call for the study of poetry within a model of world literature that respects the linguistic specificity not only of the poems that are bound to one language but also of those that employ translingual practices. . . an excellent entry into the subject."
— Svet Literatury
"It is worth noting how lucid, ambitious, and theoretically sophisticated Poetry in a Global Age is. This is no small feat. Rather than completely engaging with the globe in a way that might read as reductionist, or glossing over specificities in an attempt for totality, Ramazani provides us with an approach, a method, and a way of reading poetry that will reverberate closely for readers in our interconnected and global age."
— Wallace Stevens Journal