In the sixth episode of their series, Sarah and Sandeep look at poems that explore the complexities of money and its metaphorical power: Frederick Seidel’s ‘In Late December’ starts with an image of degradation in the symbolic heart of global capitalism but ends with an ambiguous vision of the undead in an apparent appeal to common humanity; in Ella Frears’s Goodlord, an email from an estate agent triggers a stream-of-consciousness tour through a series of barely-habitable rental properties and a reflection on a financial system that traps people in dehumanising accommodation; and Danez Smith’s ‘C.R.E.A.M.’ provides a satirical exploration of the relationship between race, poverty and systemic exploitation, describing a compressed history of the evolution of oppression from slavery to sharecropping to the modern exploitations of capitalism.

Read Frederick Seidel's 'In Late December' in the LRB:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v38/n24/frederick-seidel/in-late-december

Get 25% off a 12-month subscription to Close Readings with the code ’POETRY25’ at checkout here: ⁠https://lrb.me/crpoetry

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