>Okay, I HAVE to ask this even though it will make me look like a bit of a jerk
>(so???). What in the world is Language (or I've seen it spelled
>l-a-n-g-u-a-g-e) poetry? Why is it called that? Who are among its exponents
>and why do people jump ugly with it?
Since no one else seems willing, I'll give a very brief answer. The
spelling with dashes is how the magazine of the same name spelled it on its
cover. The poets first identified as language poets were simply poets
published in the magazine, primarily a group of then young poets in NY and
California who had and have less in common in their practice than in the
way they write about it. Among that group are Charles Bernstein, Bob
Perelman, Barrett Watten, Ron Silliman, Lyn Hejinian, and Rae Armantrout.
After an initial period of proclaiming (in post-structuralist terms that
made reception among certain academic critics likely) their uniqueness as
proponents of a poetry based on an awareness that language is not the same
as what it describes and is interesting in itself and in the process
getting everyone who had already figured this out very angry, they began
coopting as many of the angered as would tolerate being coopted. They also
began replicating, by turning out students, most of whose work is difficult
to distinguish, who established journals and ezines that mostly publish
themselves, which of course means that most of the poetry world, even the
part that might be sympathetic, simply ignores them, while among themselves
they have an unrealistic sense of their own notoriety.
Poetry movements are usually about advertizing. There was surrealism before
Breton--Breton gave it currency and cultural clout. This is a similar
phenomenon, as is the lack of distinctiveness of the poetry of the younger
practicioners, which will oif course pass as a few of them--it's always a
very few--mature into poets. In fact, controversy and jargon aside, like
any other groups some of them write better than others and some of them
aren't worth reading.
About two years ago Marjorie Perloff, the most prominent supporter of
Language Poets, alarmed the crowd by proclaiming that they were terrible
theorists and should leave that to the specialists. A fun moment.
Mark
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