Individual Perfection: A collection of Neo-Liberal Poetry.
America Oh America press, £10.99.

Does poetry have an imperative to be subversive? Poets tend to be critical of their own nation. Some, like Yeats, choose a propagandist style and use this at the service of an insurgent cause; others, like Burns, invoke a lost sense of national pride.

When poets create a work that praises the status quo, critics tend to denigrate it as kitsch: the verse of many Poet Laureates, or the lyrics to national anthems, falls victim to critical scorn. If the winners write history, it is argued, then the losers write poetry.

But what if the most powerful country on the earth managed to produce a respected group of poets whose work captured its national mood, embraced its ideology and supported its ambitions?

The America Oh America press debates this question with its brave release of a poetry anthology from a trio of notorious poets: Clint Fortune, Denver Hasselhof and Edward Banker.

These three upturned the quiet, poverty-stricken and modest profession of poesy and let it embrace the business ethos of neo-liberalism. Yet, selfish interests and treachery tore their union apart.

Fortune, Hasselhof and Banker met as literature students at Harvard University in the mid 1990s. All three came from successful and rich families and were shocked to find that their fellow students, although possessing similar backgrounds, attacked the ideology that had kept their parents so financially buoyant.

"All these spoilt brats in our lecture theatres," says Hasselhof in the introduction to this collection of their works, "espoused the left-wing ideals that would have seen the wealth that got them into Harvard redistributed to poorer people."

Outside of genre fiction, the trio discovered there was very little literature, and virtually no poetry, in existence that supported the dominant neo-liberal position. They decided to be the standard bearers of modern America. They wanted to celebrate the free trade, private ownership, individual choice and little state interference: a formula, they believed, that needed to be exported abroad so the whole world could benefit from its efficiency. Fortune said, in an early interview: "We want to give America's success a song and a heart."

To achieve this, the trio appealed to the business world for funding. Fortune explained that their purpose was to "make money from poetry that shows how great the corporate ideology is; otherwise, we would be hypocrites." Corporations would sponsor individual poems, their name and logo would appear below every reproduction of the poem and, often, within the name.

Companies agreed to this, providing they had sole ownership over the poems – except in collected works, such as this anthology – and could use the verse in their advertising. The three poets agreed to these terms.

Attractive, smart and fashionable, Fortune was the philosopher of the group, a kind of lyrical Milton Friedman. His romanticism presents itself in early works such as "You only have yourself to love":

If you're rich in your heart
life, money and love you'll see
One day many others
brought out of their poverty

But giving love to others
is like throwing money in the wind's way
Some may come back to you,
but never as much as you threw away

Burly, arrogant and the son of a multi-millionaire property developer, Hasselhof had his own political ambitions. He used poetry as a way of finding an outlet for his self-aggrandisement, as in "When I am dead".

I will never rest until
My face is on a dollar bill

Squat, reserved and introvert, Banker was the most intriguing of the three. In his work, he went on a stylistic shopping spree to find the correct poetic uniform for the liberal right.

After trying out symbolism, surrealism and Homeric epic, he chanced upon a kind of bizarre Biblical update for the business class. Candidly, he set out his ambition. "I will give a voice to the silent majority to rival the poeticism of Keats, the insight of Shakespeare and the patriotism of Whitman." His most infamous work was "The Neo-Liberal Commandments", written for an oil company:

God wants me to keep what I make for myself
God wants me to seize all rewards that come my way
God wants me to ask for nothing from the State
God wants me to die for my country in times of war
God wants me to let the market do what it wants
God wants me to defend my business, my property and my family against any potential threat
God wants me to give people what they want, but only if they can pay for it
If people do not want what I give them, God wants me to enlighten them into the qualities of whatever I have to sell
God wants me to love my country, as long as my country loves what God wants
God wants me to be rich

Due to their genius at business, the three men quickly became wealthy. This situation provoked anger among the wider poetry community, who thought these upstarts, due to their plush sponsorship deals, were nothing more than copywriters dressed as artists. So, in order to be taken seriously, the three decided to split and forge their own careers.

But poetry seemed to hold less of an interest for Fortune and Hasselhof than for Banker. Fortune went into advertising, while Hasselhof chose speechwriting for "Bulldog" Jim Kellay, the far-right mid-western senator. Kellay's election campaign revolved around the idea that taxes should only be spent on defence. In his 'No state but security' speech, he chimed: "Ask nothing of the Government but security to allow you to carry out your life as you wish."

However, Hasselhof fell foul of his own chosen candidate's individual morality. At the end of one of his speeches, he wrote Kelly's catchy mantra: "I tell you what it's all about: Family. Family. Family." Such a maxim would have struck a chord among his small town audience, had it not been later revealed that Kelly had two mistresses and four illegitimate children.

But Banker chose a different path. He became in-house poet for the Bush regime, causing anger among some of his fraternity who believed Bush's leadership was more protectionist and pro-American than genuinely neo-liberal. Two years ago, Banker was a kind of White House bard, even composing a poem to celebrate the war effort: 'Angels are on our side'.

Angels are on our side
Their hearts beat in our drums
Our ammunition glides
With their momentum

Their wings warm us when the night is cold
Their kisses make our spirit bold
The ally whose song is in our key
Rousing the conscience of the enemy

But then something happened. The corporate sponsorship suddenly stopped, the commissions disappeared and Banker was ejected from his post. It seemed the far right had some suspicions about Banker's alleged sympathies. The Subversive Poetry Unit of the FBI had undertaken intense practical criticism of his output and discovered that, much to the surprise of his family and friends, Banker was acting against his supposed allegiances.

It seemed Banker was a kind of double agent for the dominant left-wing poetic agenda. In his Neo-Liberal Commandments, it was shown that every other line was contradictory to the one before. Through using his subversive stanza technique in the literature of companies, Government propaganda and culture, Banker was slowly poisoning the minds of the very people the neo-liberal agenda attempted to inspire. Hence the editors under-represent Banker's output in this anthology, and caveats accompany the text to illustrate the extent of his treason.

Within hours of his exposure, Banker abandoned his family and quickly defected to a small, near-bankrupt publishing house, Fellowship of Fools, an operation that survived on funding from a mad millionaire widow's deathbed will. Here, Banker continued to compose poetry that turned rightist propaganda against itself, such as in 'Praxis of evil', a poem not included in this collection.

Let's be tough on rhyme,
Tough on the causes of rhyme
Start a war on sympathy
Take it till the end of time

We don't need to burn the books
For editors can't print them
We don't need to break the kids
For teachers cannot learn them

The market has no need for verse
So verse must hate the market
The market's enemy is ours
So verse will be our target

Then, three months ago, an articulated lorry suddenly stopped on the fast lane of a highway, just in front of Banker's car. The poet smashed into the back of the lorry, causing a minor pile-up where four others drivers were also killed. Banker's two fellow poets did not attend his funeral.