Journal of Modern Literature Vol. 41, No. 3  •  Copyright © The Trustees of Indiana University  •  DOI 10.2979/jmodelite.41.3.09 Conceptualisms in Crisis: The Fate of Late Conceptual Poetry Michael Leong University at Albany, SUNY Conceptual poetry, widely considered to be one of the twenty-frst century’s preeminent avant-gardes, is now under attack. Kenneth Goldsmith’s failed performance “Te Body of Michael Brown” has thrown conceptualism into crisis—especially in regards to the racial politics of appropriation. Nevertheless, works such as M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! and Claudia Rankine’s Citizen show how conceptual techniques can efectively respond to racial traumas. Similarly, Chilean poet Carlos Soto Román’s textual appropriations protest against state-sponsored murder and suggest new modes of political critique from the global South. Moving beyond a North American context and disentangling the conceptualisms of the movement’s most high-profle practitioners from late conceptual projects by writers of color demonstrate how conceptual poetry is not dying, as some claim, but evolving along diferent lines of lineage. Keywords: contemporary poetry / race and appropriation / conceptual poetry in an international frame / M. NourbeSe Philip / Claudia Rankine / Carlos Soto Román W hat happened to conceptual writing? Considered the cutting edge of contemporary poetry for the past ffteen years, conceptual writing is now in crisis. Indeed, signifcant poets and critics have declared con- ceptual poetry dead or dying in 2012, 2014, and 2015, variously linking concep- tualism’s demise to its thorough institutionalization, to its troubling relationships to the long postwar economic boom and the fnancial crisis of 2008, and, most Michael Leong (michael.c.leong@gmail.com) is assistant professor of English at the University at Albany, SUNY. His critical writing has appeared in A Contracorriente: A Journal on Social History and Literature in Latin America, Contemporary Literature, and Modern Language Studies. His latest poetry books are Cutting Time with a Knife (Black Square Editions, 2012), Who Unfolded My Origami Brain? (Fence Digital, 2017), and Words on Edge (Black Square Editions, 2018).