Monetized

by Alissa Quart

Alissa Quart's first book of poetry sifts brilliantly through our landscape of damaged Americana. From spam ads to tech speak, from self-help to real estate to the lingo of gossip or "mom" sites, these poems insistently limn a country where nearly everything has taken on the character of money. Quart, the acclaimed author of Branded and two other books of reported cultural criticism, cuts into our clamorous culture, summoning its strangeness and humor. Monetized also reflects upon a shared longing for the analogue era, as well as our longing for a less commercialized past. This book is a remarkable account of a state of yearning for the passing moment in a period of rapid acceleration, a feeling Quart calls "right-now-nostalgia."

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2015

About the author

Alissa Quart is the executive editor of the journalism non-profit Economic Hardship Reporting Project. She co-founded its current incarnation with Barbara Ehrenreich. She is also the author of four previous acclaimed books, “Branded,’’ “Republic of Outsiders,’’ “Hothouse Kids’’ and the poetry book “Monetized.’’ She writes the Outclassed column for The Guardian and has published features and reported commentary in many magazines and newspapers, most recently for The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Nation and The New York Review of Books. She has won the Columbia Journalism School’s 2018 Alumni Award and the LA Press Club Award for Commentary, was a 2010 Nieman fellow at Harvard University, and has been nominated for an Emmy and a National Magazine Award.

Reviews

[Alex Zakharov]

picked up by
accident, ‘self sell’
not terrible. i read. on.
induction failure!
 
poetry as symbol, cruci
 fied by structure. a likely
futility.

[Sara]

Once I got into the swing of things, around part 2, i began to love the cultural enjambment. Poems are supposed to infuse in us the language of others, and help us continue to search for our personal meaningfulness equations. Some of these really hit that mark for me.

[Peter]

Extremely smart poetry, much of it over my head, and, because there references needed to be checked later, it was not as enjoyable as it could have been. I feel dumb, but I take comfort in knowing that I am smarter than one or more POTUSs.

[r]

"Overnight, binging turned positive."