The American Subject

<p>Blending true crime, American history, and conceptual poetry, <em>The American Subject</em> is the dramatic sequel to Goldsmith’s bestselling <em>Seven American Deaths and Disasters</em>. Drawing on medical examiner and police investigation reports, its twenty-four prose poems meticulously examine the postmortem bodies of American political figures, religious leaders, and celebrities, from Abraham Lincoln to Kurt Cobain. In doing so, Goldsmith constructs an alternative American history—one inscribed upon the bodies themselves rather than in the public events that conventionally define the past. Extending his earlier investigations in uncreative writing, these texts pose provocative questions of authorship, witness, and style, further expanding the boundaries of what literature can be.</p>