Reacting to who and why and what.
Those concerns, for the most part, grow out of the rejection of the dominant model
for poetic production and reception today-the so-called voice poem. According to many
Language poets, the voice poem depends on a model of communication that needs to be challenged:
the notion that the poet (a self-present subject) transmits a particular message ("experience,"
"emotion") to a reader (another self-present subject) through a language which is neutral, transparent,
"natural."
-Hartley, 1989
What's in a name.
The term language-centered was first used in print, in the history of the Language School,
in a headnote to "The Dwelling Place: 9 Poets," Ron Silliman's 1973 selection of recent
work published in the ethnopoetic journal Alcheringa (1975): "9 poets out of the present,
average age 28 . . . called variously `language centered,' `minimal,' `non-referential
formalism,' `diminished referentiality,' `structuralist.' Not a group but a tendency in
the work of many."6 In the context of Alcheringa, "language-centered" connoted a culturally
holistic notion of "total poetics," in editor Jerome Rothenberg's (1975: 131) terms, as
much as a linguistic turn to structuralist theory.
Barrett Watten: Theory Death and the term "Language Poetry"
Whose Language.
Who are the Language poets? The answer to that question depends on how one
defines the label. One could begin, for instance, by listing those poets
(most born between 1940 and 1950) who for fifteen years or so have
appeared in the following Language anthologies: Toothpick, Lisbon
& the Orcas Islands (1973); Alcheringa
(1975); Open Letter (1977); Hills (1980);
Ironwood (1982); Paris Review (1982); The
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book (1984); Change (1985);
Writing/Talks (1985); boundary 2 (1986); In the
American Tree (1986); and "Language" Poetries (1987).
While the periphery of the group remains rather amorphous-Silliman lists
almost eighty poets who might have accompanied the forty who are
represented in In the American Tree--many names frequently recur in
anthologies, critical essays, and poetry magazines such as This,
Tottel's, Roof Hills, Miam, Qu, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, The Difficulties, A
Hundred Posters, and more recently (though not as the predominant
group) Sulfur, Temblor, Sink, and
Tramen.
Those frequent names are Bruce Andrews, Rae Armantrout, Steve Benson,
Charles Bernstein, David Bromige, Clark Coolidge, Alan Davies, Ray
DiPalma, Robert Grenier, Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian, Susan Howe, Steve
McCaffery, Michael Palmer, Bob Perelman, Kit Robinson, Peter Seaton, James Sherry,
Ron Silliman, Diane Ward, Barrett Watten, and Hannah Weiner.
-George Hartley
Robert Grenier
|
b?. Co-Founder of This ('71-74).
|
Bruce Andrews
|
b?. Co-founder of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E ('78-81). Asst. Prof. Poly Sci, Fordham University.
|
Charles Bernstein
|
b4/4/1950. Co-founder of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E ('78-81). David Gray Prof. at State U of NY, Buffalo.
|
Ron Silliman
|
b?. Everywhere. Somebody has too much free time on their hands.
|
Steve McCaffery
|
b?.
|
Ray DiPalma
|
b1943. Teaching in NYC, at the School of Visual Arts.
|
Susan Howe
|
b?. Prof. of English at State U of NY, Buffalo. Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets, 2000.
|
|
Clark Coolidge
| b?.
|
Bob Perelman
|
b?. Ph.D. from Berkley. Currently Asst. Prof. U of Penn.
|
Lyn Hejinian
|
b?. CA. Lives and writes in Berkely.
|
Rae Armantrout
|
b?. Teaches at the University of California at San Diego.
|
David Bromige
|
b?. Teaches in CA, U of San Francisco.
|
Diane Ward
|
b?.
|
Hannah Weiner
|
b1928-1997.
|
Michael Palmer.
|
b1943 NYC, lives in SF. Not michaelpalmer.net. Ivory tower my fat white ass.
|
Barrett Watten
|
b?. AB, Biochem, U of CA, Berkeley, 1969; MFA, English, U Iowa, 1972; U of CA, Berk., 1995. Asst. Prof. at Wayne State U, MI.
|
Rod Smith
|
b?.
|
|
Which leaves us the question?
There are no Language poets to be found in the over 5,000 pages comprised by the following
anthologies: New American Poets of the 80s, edited by Jack Myers and Roger Weingarten (1984);
Singular Voices, edited by Stephen Berg (1985); The Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets,
edited by Dave Smith and David Bottoms (1985); The Harvard Book of Contemporary American Poetry,
edited by Helen Vendler (1985); The Direction of Poetry,, edited by Robert Richman (1988);
The Longman, Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, edited by Stuart Friebert and
David Young (1983; second edition, 1989); Contemporary American Poetry, edited by A. Poulin, Jr.
(fourth edition, 1985; fifth edition, 1991); The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry,
edited by J.D. McClatchy; and New American Poets of the 90s, edited by Jack Myers and Roger
Weingarten (1991). Needless to add, they are not to be found in any of the omnibus textbook
anthologies of American literature (where their contemporaries and ethnically appropriate
juniors are favored). Yet this group of outre poets has been repeatedly and favorably singled
out in prestigious scholarly journals (including Critical Inquiry, New Literary History, and
South Atlantic Quarterly, American Literary History, and even The Southern Review), and they
are routinely discussed in monographs on contemporary poetry.Marjorie Perloff and Jerome McGann,
two of the most eminent scholars of poetry, are vigorous supporters of Language po- etry.
So what is going on?
-Jed Rasula
The lasting contribution of language poetics, I would posit, is that at a
moment when workshop poetry all across the U.S. was wedded to a
kind of neo-confessionalist, neo-realist poetic discourse, a
discourse committed to drawing pretentious metaphors about failed
relationships from hollandaise recipes, language theory reminded
us that poetry is a making [poien], a construction using language,
rhythm, sound, and visual image, that the subject, far from being
simply the poet speaking in his or her natural "voice," was itself
a complex construction, and that--most important--there was
actually something at stake in producing a body of poems, and that
poetic discourse belonged to the same universe as philosophical
and political discourse.
-Marjorie Perloff
|