Song of the Latent Commons: The Rhetorical Poetics of Latrinalia

ABSTRACT

This article offers a rhetorical approach to poetry as material and functional language in society. More specifically, it theorizes poetry as a discursive register operating across and beyond the literary field to articulate imaginative possibility. Poetry is a socially constructed category validated by decades of institutional criticism, but it also has everyday use. In this spirit, the author turns to readings of poetic inscriptions in public bathrooms across the United States. These spaces toe the line between public and private and have historically been used to discipline bodies. When accounted for in situations that enact social violence and demand resistance, poetry emerges as a register that gestures to realizable possibilities. Ultimately, the author argues that an assemblage of poetic register in public restrooms is a site of rhetorical intervention for radical imaginaries in public arguments.