In contemporary Western societies, lyric poetry is often considered an elitist or solipsistic literary genre. Yet a closer look at its history reveals that lyric has always been intertwined with the politics of community formation, from the imagining of national and transnational discursive communities, to the use of poetry in episodes of collective action, protest, and social resistance. Poetic forms have circulated between languages and traditions from around the world and across time. But how does lyric poetry address or even create communities - and of what kinds? This volume takes a global perspective to investigate poetic communities in dialogue with recent developments in lyric theory and concepts of community. In doing so, it explores both the political potentialities and the perils of lyric poetry. Rethinking Lyric Communities is an exciting contribution to work on lyric poetry. Exploring modern and contemporary literatures in various languages, it recasts the lyric not as the overheard inner thoughts of an isolated individual but a calling into being of potential collectivities. And community is reconceptualized not as a pregiven, closed, organic unit but the shifting, open-ended social worlds that lyric identifications and iterations, anthems and apostrophes, performances and gestures, creoles and translations help us imagine. Rich with insight and provocation, this is a volume to be reckoned with for years to come. - Jahan Ramazani, author of Poetry in a Global Age In premodern times lyric poetry was understood to build or strengthen several kinds of communities: ones of poetic filiation, social positioning, political grouping, religious bonding, affective engagement, and spiritual connection. In Rethinking Lyric Communities, Francesco Giusti, Irene Fantappiè, and Laura Scuriatti draw together contributions from diverse languages, epochs and traditions, to investigate how poetry can form communities in the modern age. Under four headings - Indexicality, Identification, Individuation, Translation - the contributions cumulatively build up a fascinating picture of how often resistant communities can be born out of the most unlikely practices. Perspectives range from the conviviality of the early twentieth century salon to illegal gatherings in the Soviet Union; from Queer communities to football chants or translation as reapir; from colonialism to cruising. This brilliantly poised examination is full of surprises and balances attention to theory with illuminating close reading to demonstrate that poetry can make things happen. The whole concludes with a fine conversation with the poet Vahni Anthony Capildeo who brings a practitioner's perspective to bear on how fragile communities can be shaped out of the quintessential loneliness of the writer and how poems can crystalise values about which readers in turn can coalescence. In times in which poetry is often thought isolated and ineffectual, this is vital reading of the very best kind. - Karen Leeder, Schwarz-Taylor Chair of German Language and Literature, University of Oxford, Einstein Visiting Fellow, Freie Universität Berlin and editor of Flaschenpost: German Poetry and the Long Twentieth Century. Irene Fantappiè is Assistant Professor (Tenure-Track) of Comparative Literature at the University of Cassino. After completing her PhD at the University of Bologna, she was Humboldt Fellow and researcher at Humboldt Universität in Berlin, and later directed a three-year DFG research project at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research interests include translation, intertextuality, and authorship in Italian and German-speaking literature from the Renaissance to the present day. She is the author of Franco Fortini e la poesia europea. Riscritture di autorialità (2021), La letteratura tedesca in Italia. Un'introduzione (1900-1920) (with A. Baldini et al., 2018), L'autore esposto. Scrittura e scritture in Karl Kraus (2016), and Karl Kraus e Shakespeare. Recitare, citare, tradurre (2012). Francesco Giusti is Career Development Fellow and Tutor in Italian at Christ Church, University of Oxford. Previously he held fellowships at the University of York, the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, and the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry. He has published two books devoted respectively to the ethics of mourning and to creative desire in lyric poetry: Canzonieri in morte. Per un'etica poetica del lutto (2015) and Il desiderio della lirica. Poesia, creazione, conoscenza (2016). He co-edited, with Christine Ott and Damiano Frasca, the volume Poesia e nuovi media (2018); with Benjamin Lewis Robinson, The Work of World Literature (2021); and with Adele Bardazzi and Emanuela Tandello, A Gaping Wound: Mourning in Italian Poetry (2022). Laura Scuriatti is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Bard College Berlin. Her research focuses on modernist literature, with special interest in life-writing, aesthetics and gender. She is the author of