Keegan Cook Finberg
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keegancf.bsky.social
Keegan Cook Finberg
@keegancf.bsky.social
1.3K followers 510 following 220 posts
because my little dog knows me. writer. scholar. professor. recently finished a book about poetic form and the US welfare state: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/poetry-in-general/9780231219228/
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keegancf.bsky.social
Keegan Cook Finberg @keegancf.bsky.social · Jul 30
My book Poetry in General: How a Literary Form Became Public is available for pre-order! I am excited to share it with the world. Find it on the Columbia UP site with endorsements from Anthony Reed, Leigh Claire La Berge, Sarah Dowling and Craig Dworkin cup.columbia.edu/book/poetry-...
Poetry in General | Columbia University Press
In the second half of the twentieth century, poetry leapt out of books and became an interdisciplinary public form. Poetry entered bureaucratic systems of or... | CUP
cup.columbia.edu
Reposted by Keegan Cook Finberg
andyhines.bsky.social
Philly-adjacent! On 1/27 at 4:15p ET I'll talk with Chris Newfield, Eleni Schirmer, and Jason Wozniak about the University Keywords book, but also how to approach the contemporary situation in US higher education.

If you can't make it in person, you can join online. bit.ly/UniversityKeywords
Poster with green and yellow background, four moody black and white portraits all with interesting hair, and the green and yellow cover of University Keywords with the text: Degrees, Debt, and the University: Andy Hines, Chris Newfield, Eleni Schirmer, and Jason Wozniak in conversation January 27, 4:15p ET Sproul 201, IC Dome In-Person and Livestreamed Free and open to the public Supported by the Aydelotte Foundation and Swarthmore College Libraries
January 13, 2026 at 3:41 PM
Reposted by Keegan Cook Finberg
philipleventhal.bsky.social
#MLA26 might be over but you can still save 30% on all
@columbiaup.bsky.social books in literary studies, including new books in poetry criticism by @xenoglossic.bsky.social, @kristingrogan.bsky.social, @keegancf.bsky.social, and @afilreis.bsky.social. Use the coupon code MLA! bit.ly/4jBA1fP
January 13, 2026 at 12:36 PM
Reposted by Keegan Cook Finberg
sarahmdowling1.bsky.social
I got to chat with @alixbeeston.bsky.social about Here Is a Figure for her @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcast! Alix asks such great questions, and it was really a joy to talk to her about where the book came from and what it’s about!

If you’d like to listen:
newbooksnetwork.com/here-is-a-fi...
Sarah Dowling, "Here Is a Figure: Grounding Literary Form" (Northwestern UP, 2025) - New Books Network
newbooksnetwork.com
January 13, 2026 at 11:55 AM
Reposted by Keegan Cook Finberg
bowensociety.bsky.social
Proposals invited: special issue: *Feminist Modernist Exiles*, to show how women’s ongoing experiences of transnational, transcultural, and translingual experiences in voluntary and involuntary exile continue to generate new forms of feminist modernism.
Info: phyllisl @ northwestern .edu
January 13, 2026 at 8:44 AM
keegancf.bsky.social
Hi! Here is a free-access link to my essay on the War on Poverty, family abolition, and lyric technologies for @sarahmdowling1.bsky.social and Claire Grandy's brilliant special issue about "lyric beyond containment." read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...
“What Welfare Does to You”: Personhood in Baltimore’s Chicory
This essay explores how women and children writing lyric poetry about welfare in the 1960s and 1970s for a government-funded publication dismantled the white liberal imagination of what made poverty a...
read.dukeupress.edu
January 12, 2026 at 8:19 PM
Reposted by Keegan Cook Finberg
kristingrogan.bsky.social
I'm not at MLA but my book is, hanging out with @keegancf.bsky.social and flirting with Joe Brainard, as is only right
Columbia UP stall
January 11, 2026 at 5:11 PM
Reposted by Keegan Cook Finberg
mattseybold.bsky.social
This was published in the dead week between Christmas and New Year’s. If you work in education & were, reasonably, taking a break, maybe you missed it.

Don’t miss it.
The ‘Crisis of the Humanities’ Is Over. That’s Not a Good Thing.
All of higher ed now suffers the attacks of politics and technology.
www.chronicle.com
January 6, 2026 at 2:10 PM
keegancf.bsky.social
Planning “literature and surveillance” for next semester
Bug pile of books including DARK MATTERS REGAINING UNCONSCIOUSNESS The Address Book The descent of Alette LOOK THE DREAM HOTEL 24/7 NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT THIS Discipline & Punish The Watchman in Pieces
December 30, 2025 at 2:36 PM
Reposted by Keegan Cook Finberg
nicksturm.bsky.social
The takeaways: 1) It's useful for everyone to know that Poetry Foundation is now a nonoperating foundation, a shift in its IRS-regulated designation that means it focuses on external grantmaking rather than programming. 2) This change makes PF a national philanthropic org with a magazine attached.
nicksturm.bsky.social Nick Sturm @nicksturm.bsky.social · Dec 17
This Publishers Weekly article about protests at the Poetry Foundation, including layoffs & changes in PF programming, is so strange. Because this shift is so important to poets, to readers, & to the field, here's a 🧵 about how we got here:

tinyurl.com/326xy2tm
Poetry Foundation Staff Protest Program Cuts, Job Loss
Employees at the foundation say the decision of senior leadership to eliminate public programs, announced earlier this month, goes against the organization’s mission, and are circulating a petition to...
www.publishersweekly.com
December 17, 2025 at 4:52 PM
Reposted by Keegan Cook Finberg
nicksturm.bsky.social
This Publishers Weekly article about protests at the Poetry Foundation, including layoffs & changes in PF programming, is so strange. Because this shift is so important to poets, to readers, & to the field, here's a 🧵 about how we got here:

tinyurl.com/326xy2tm
Poetry Foundation Staff Protest Program Cuts, Job Loss
Employees at the foundation say the decision of senior leadership to eliminate public programs, announced earlier this month, goes against the organization’s mission, and are circulating a petition to...
www.publishersweekly.com
December 17, 2025 at 3:40 PM
Reposted by Keegan Cook Finberg
sarahmdowling1.bsky.social
It’s now (and until Jan 3rd!) 50% off with code NEWYEAR—along with every other incredible book on the @nupress.bsky.social website!!

nupress.northwestern.edu/978081014790...
sarahmdowling1.bsky.social Sarah Dowling @sarahmdowling1.bsky.social · Dec 15
Happy book birthday to Here Is a Figure!! (Flowers repurposed from my human birthday last week, haha.) I’m very grateful to everyone who’s read it over the past year. This book is about people lying down & bodies on the ground in contemporary literature—esp poetry & drama, but also fiction.
The book Here Is a Figure in front of a “flower cake,” with a sparkly sign that says “happy birthday.” An unblossomed amaryllis is beside it.
December 17, 2025 at 12:02 AM
keegancf.bsky.social
I’m proud to be part of this issue
differences.bsky.social differences @differences.bsky.social · Dec 6
differences 36.2–3 is out now — edited by Sarah Dowling and Claire Grandy, "Lyric beyond Containment" features essays from Jacques Khalip, David Marriott, Andrea Brady, Amy De'Ath, Whitney DeVos, Jan Mieszkowski, Ren Ellis Neyra, Susan Briante, more: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...
Cover of Lyric beyond Containment, a special issue of differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, volume 36, issue 2–3. A yellow cover with black text.
December 7, 2025 at 12:09 PM
Reposted by Keegan Cook Finberg
kristingrogan.bsky.social
my book is 50% off on the Columbia site today - for $18 you can have the perfect gift for an uncle you don’t like or that one cousin who won’t stop talking about social reproduction theory

cup.columbia.edu/book/stitch-...
Stitch, Unstitch | Columbia University Press
The labor of literature is often thought of as a specialized craft, distinct from everyday work. In Stitch, Unstitch, Kristin Grogan traces an alternative vi... | CUP
cup.columbia.edu
December 1, 2025 at 3:04 PM
keegancf.bsky.social
Ordered! I listened to an interview with @riislover667.bsky.social on the New Books Network and I am very excited to read this. Most brilliant and resonant (for me personally) account of gestation and breastfeeding I have heard.
December 1, 2025 at 6:17 PM
keegancf.bsky.social
Columbia University Press titles are 50% off. I know this because I ordered copies of Poetry in General today for artists and poets who gave me permission to print their work in the book. Thank you, brilliant poets! Thank you discounts! cup.columbia.edu/book/poetry-...
Poetry in General | Columbia University Press
In the second half of the twentieth century, poetry leapt out of books and became an interdisciplinary public form. Poetry entered bureaucratic systems of or... | CUP
cup.columbia.edu
December 1, 2025 at 3:09 PM
keegancf.bsky.social
Buy books! Support Red Emma’s ❤️
redemmas.org Red Emma’s @redemmas.org · Dec 1
Cyber Monday flash sale! 20% off online on all in stock books, today only. Use the code CYBER at check out. Shop now, save, and support radical space in Baltimore: redemmas.org/books
December 1, 2025 at 12:37 PM
Reposted by Keegan Cook Finberg
andyhines.bsky.social
everyone is talking about getting copies of University Keywords (or other JHU Press books) for all their friends, students, and comrades for the holidays, especially when it is 40% off with the code HHOL25.
November 24, 2025 at 2:03 PM
keegancf.bsky.social
Hi! will you be at the ASA conference this weekend? I am packing for San Juan and getting excited to talk to @lalouverouge.bsky.social and @downevent.bsky.social and @lintax.bsky.social about the idea of the child in late stage empire. Join us on Friday at 4:45 pm!
November 19, 2025 at 3:23 PM
Reposted by Keegan Cook Finberg
haymarketbooks.org
Sharing a practice of reading with children is also a practice of listening to children: “What are you thinking about? What are your questions?“ @lalouverouge.bsky.social
The Case for Child Liberation Through Children‘s Books
In troubling the idea of childhood, there is perhaps no better place to go than children’s literature. Children’s literature is where stories of childhood are produced, ostensibly, for children; it…
lithub.com
November 17, 2025 at 6:02 PM
keegancf.bsky.social
I am full of gratitude for this conversation @redemmas.org on Saturday with @kristingrogan.bsky.social and Chris Nealon. It was such a wonderful way to launch Poetry in General. Thanks to all who came!!
Three people having fun discussing work and poetry.
November 17, 2025 at 5:12 PM
keegancf.bsky.social
Coming out of very fun conversation on Saturday and I would like to announce that it is wonderful to read and think about Stitch, Unstitch by @kristingrogan.bsky.social, which helps us shape the modernist canon in relation to how poets engage everyday, ordinary labor.
November 17, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Reposted by Keegan Cook Finberg
titachico.bsky.social
Book arts are never just books or arts.

Incredible work.
mkirschenbaum.bsky.social Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · Nov 15
This is a 52-pound 9000+ page accordion-bound artist’s book of Donald Trump’s lies, conceived, printed, and bound by Jill and Ray Nichols of @leadgraffiti.bsky.social in Delaware. Each of the 9000 pages has the text (per the Washington Post) of one or more of Trump’s lies; none are repeated.
The 9000-page 52-pound book, entitled LIAR, LIAR, on display today at the University of Maryland. Sample interior page. Front of a postcard describing the project. Photo of postcard describing project: “9,296 pages document 3o,573 false or misleading claims by Donald Trump from his first day in office, 2017, to his final day on January 20, 2020, when Joe Biden was sworn in as the country's next president. All that verbiage is s3" thick, weighs 52 pounds, and it started like this. The disolution of the Delaware College of Art & Design, to whom Lead Graffti had donated 1oos of design books over the past decade, brought an invitation to redaim them. We found a few, which brought us another interesting find — a blank Coppic-stitched book with a spine about 36 inches wide bound by Ema Ishii Holdredge for her BEA show at the Corcoran School of Art in 2008. That book haunted us for several weeks, and we decided it was too audacious not to give ita Lead Graffiti shot. For a while, we pondered how to fill a several thousand-page book with content that made a serious point. The notion of the presidential untruths came to mind, so maybe there was some documentation we could "borrow?" Sure enough, in a few Safari minutes, we found a downloadable PDE from The Washington Post that we could massage into a typographic form we could use. We were off. Ray undertook the ink-jet printing of the pages, folding and inserting the red cover-weight sheets for structural support, and gathering and punching the folds for sewing. Jill did 99.8% of the sewing. At a 3o2 United gathering, we encouraged attendees to give the book a stroke. Shown at right is the head of the Delaware ACLU, who has excellent technique. LEAD GRAFFITI | NEWARK, DELAWARE| LEADGRAFFITI.COM|RAY@LEADGRAIETTI.COM”
November 15, 2025 at 9:01 PM
keegancf.bsky.social
Anyone? Brian’s attendance is requested 💜
glavey.bsky.social Brian Glavey @glavey.bsky.social · Nov 15
Will someone come pick me up and drive me to Baltimore for this?
kristingrogan.bsky.social Kristin Grogan @kristingrogan.bsky.social · Nov 15
Keegan’s book is just so, so good - on how poetry expresses, refracts, and critiques state-managed capitalism, and how it does this by developing interdisciplinary public forms. I’ve been reading this book all week and cannot wait to talk with Keegan and Chris later today!
November 15, 2025 at 7:24 PM
keegancf.bsky.social
🥹
kristingrogan.bsky.social Kristin Grogan @kristingrogan.bsky.social · Nov 15
It’s a book for anyone who wants to think about poetry and the poetic beyond the line and stanza, for anyone who loves art and Marx in equal measure, for anyone bored of rigid disciplinary divides and airy invocations of “the public”
November 15, 2025 at 3:34 PM
keegancf.bsky.social
This is tonight! I’m very excited about it
November 15, 2025 at 1:54 PM