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Contingencies of the Bourgeoisie

Contingencies of the Bourgeoisie is the third book of poems by Grant Matthew Jenkins in which he investigates the middle-class subject suspended in late capitalism and subjects to various forms of deformation, ‘de-classing,’ and ‘de-racing.’ In pieces half prose and half lyric, I test my own responsibilities and reactions through popular culture, social media, philosophy, relationship myths, news media, and other contexts that obscure the relations of power and politics, and efface the tensions of intimacy and alienation.

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published works

Fiction

A campus thriller, this novel portrays Margolis Santos, a charismatic film professor in her prime, who risks her career and life to uncover sexual corruption inside her university’s football program where rich boosters pay sorority girls to have sex with star recruits. Read an excerpt on Wattpad. Available from the author, on Amazon, Atmosphere Press, and independent bookstores.

Poetry

“What happens when poetry becomes a thrilling late night conversation? The co-authored poems in Morphs explore new ways of thinking and writing and living that were always available for people willing to take the risk of responding to each other. The back and forth leaps, jump cuts, and startling juxtapositions in these poems offer the electrifying weave, slant, and break of writers creating their own common ground.”
—Mark Wallace
Available on Lulu.

Nonfiction

A study of the Objectivist, Black Mountain, and Language poets in terms of the ‘new’ ethical criticism inspired by the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Available in hardcover at Amazon and as an e-book at U of Iowa Press.
I’m working on a new novel. All I can say about it right now is that it’s a retelling of a famous film’s plot from the point of view of the femme fatale. Intrigued? Check back for more details soon.
The poems in this collection were written between 1994 and 2002 within a transitional landscape of house, rock, and heart. They are intensely personal while attempting to objectify the very language that, for me, constitutes the personal, the person I am. They are autobiographical only in the way historiography is the study of how history is written. That history is composed of the collision between experiences of the body, of the divine, and of language.
OUT OF PRINT
EXPERIMENTAL AFRICAN AMERICAN POETRY: AN OTHER WISE ETHICS
This scholarly monograph identifies and investigates the ‘other-conscious’ ethics in black avant-garde poetry since the 1980s. Drawing on a long tradition of ethical ideas that put the other first, black poets writing in an avant garde or experimental vein in the United States push language to its limits to reveal how poetry, through content and form, can not only address but exemplify ethical postures towards some of this period’s most pressing ethical issues, such as building and sustaining community on Earth, postcolonial and racialized violence, the history of slavery and segregation in America, and the expan-sion of human consciousness and presence in the universe. The writers involved in my study include Nathaniel Mackey, Erica Hunt, Will Alexander, Harryette Mullen, and Mark McMorris.
Forthcoming 2024 from Palgrave/Macmillan

About the author

Grant Matthew Jenkins teaches creative writing and literature in Tulsa, where he lives with his four kids and two cats. Read more at his Amazon author page and TU’s website.

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May 2024
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