Language Poetry

Works Discussed in This Essay

• "Bees" by Rae Armantrout
• "Cabbage Gardens" by Susan Howe
• "Confession" by Bob Perelman
• "Fiction" by Rae Armantrout
• "Gertrude and Ludwig's Bogus Adventure" by Charles Bernstein
• "Sentences" Robert Grenier
• "To Achieve Reality" by Lyn Hejinian

During the late 1960s and 1970s, a group of poets began to feel a stagnation in American letters, particularly poetry. As a reaction to this, poets such as Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe, Robert Grenier, and Bob Perelman, many hailing from creative metropolitan centers such as San Francisco and New York City, embarked on an ambitious new form or type of poetry that they called Language poetry. Named for the journal L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, which was founded and edited by Bernstein and fellow Language poet Bruce Andrews in 1978, this avant-garde movement emphasized the use of language and sound as a way of contributing to a poem's meaning, rather than relying on established poetic forms. Purveyors of Language poetry urge readers to find their own meaning in the poems rather than expecting a single, clear meaning, thereby emphasizing the reader's role within the literature.

The Language movement found its way by denouncing parts of other movements, such as the Black Mountain movement and the New York School, with whom Language poets were dissatisfied. The growing body of work and publications from the group cemented its place in literary culture. While L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E was only published from 1978 through 1981, the journal This, which was founded in New York by poet Robert Grenier, lasted for eleven years, from 1971 to 1982, and also published books of poetry under the imprint This Press until at least 1986. In the first issue of This, Grenier delivered an ironic statement that would come to emblemize Language poetry: "I HATE SPEECH." In a 1988 essay for the Nation, Hank Lazer wrote, "Language writing can be seen as an oppositional literary practice that questions many of the assumptions of mainstream poetry. Instead of considering poetry as a staging ground for the creation and expression of an 'authentic' voice and personality, language poetry arises out of an 'exploded self,' blurs genre boundaries . . . and seeks actively collaborative relationships between reader and writer."

In her book Language Poetry: Writing as Rescue (1992), Linda M. Reinfeld noted that a cornerstone of the Language poetry movement was a deep interest in Continental writers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Julia Kristeva, and Roland Barthes, "for whom the activity of language itself has been an important theme." In opposition to mainstream American culture, "Language poets operate as both politically and philosophically oriented intellectuals" (3) who were originally outside of academic institutions—something that would change in later decades, and through the alternative press. Reinfeld also noted that while Language poetry has received much critical attention, its reception as an art form was not quite as welcoming, although that was ultimately the intent.

Language poetry is most interested in tearing down the wall between poet and reader. The language and rhythm of the poetry mean just as much as, if not more than, what the poet is actually saying. Tossing aside a need for narrative or form, the poets of the Language movement focus on words as a means of construction, rather than as symbols for things. Essentially, they view a word as simply a word, and nothing beyond that context.

In many types of poetry, the narrator of a poem will establish themself as a character, but in Language poetry that "self" is an artifice to be actively avoided. Treated as a construct, the self is not biological but rather a product of culture—a culture that consists of nothing more than actions imposed on others. This deconstruction of culture also informs the treatment of high and low culture in Language poetry. To Language poets, anything is available as subject matter, and there is no distinction between these preestablished hierarchies of culture. Language poets are also very willing to mix genres of writing and incorporate typographical elements and materials from books and the visual arts. According to an overview of Language poetry on the website Poets.org, "by breaking up poetic language, the [Language] poet is requiring the reader to find a new way to approach the text" ("A Brief Guide"). The overview also includes an excerpt from an essay by Language poet Lyn Hejinian that goes a bit deeper into the aesthetic goals and value of the work of the movement: "Language is nothing but meanings, and meanings are nothing but a flow of contexts. Such contexts rarely coalesce into images, rarely come to terms. They are transitions, transmutations, the endless radiating of denotation into relation."

The structure, or nonstructure, of Language poetry is part of the working machine. Often, there is no beginning or ending to a Language poem; rather, all of the language found within is an investigation into what is subjective—everything—and is frequently used as a means of avoiding any sort of cohesive subject at all. Along these lines, another hallmark of Language poetry is syntactical innovation that disregards the rules of grammar. Creative use of words, symbols, sentences, and pronouns is highly prized.

Finally, Language poets are well known for their ability to jump between verse and prose—many of the Language poets are highly praised for their prose poems—and their willingness to steal, distort, quote, and parody without credit to those they take from. With a hard stance against intellectual property and copyright, many of the poets frequently collaborate, with no one artist credited with the work.

The lasting cultural impact of Language poetry can be seen in movements like conceptual writing and flarf poetry. The Language poets were and are proponents of hypertexted pieces, a significant characteristic of the flarf movement. The Language movement's cultural impact continues to evolve, and many of its original contributors are still alive and actively producing work. Following the height of the movement's popularity in the United States, international affiliations sprung up in countries such as France, Brazil, Sweden, and Australia. "Language poetics, let's remember, had a strong political thrust: it was essentially a Marxist poetics that focused, in important ways, on issues of ideology and class," poetry scholar and critic Marjorie Perloff wrote. "But it was less attuned to questions of gender and race: indeed, in the case of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, although one senses that every effort was made to include 'innovative' women poets . . . the more overt theorizing itself was left, with rare exceptions, to the men in the movement." Perloff then built on this sentiment by discussing the works that were published and widely distributed—mostly by male members of the group in the late 1980s—and how this informed the British reception of the movement, one of the most important international links. Members of the Cambridge poetry scene remained skeptical, and many in the greater British literary scene were more interested in the theory behind the work than in the work itself.

Following the heyday of the Language school, many of its frontrunners found academic posts in schools such as the State University of New York at Buffalo, which runs an active online poetry database and reference guide; the University of California, both the Berkeley and the San Diego campuses; and the University of Pennsylvania, in fields including poetics, creative writing, and literature.

Rae Armantrout is a founding member of the West Coast Language poets whose work frequently focuses on the domestic and interior. Armantrout's poems are known for their lyrical style and their short lines "concerned with dismantling conventions of memory, pop culture, science, and mothering," according to her biography on the Poetry Foundation website ("Rae Armantrout"). Two of them, "Bees" and "Fiction," are great examples of the ways in which Language poets change their prose style from work to work, particularly when the two works are juxtaposed.

"Bees" finds the poem's speaker facing mortality with spare lines. It begins, "If not being (something) / is the same as being, // then I will live forever" (lines 1–3). The manner in which Armantrout morphs the use of the word "being" to mean its opposite, upon which she grants herself immortality, is a great example of the deconstruction of syntax and creative use of subject. "Fiction" is a hybrid work of prose and poetry that abstractly records the impressions of a mother and her infant child. Fragments of thoughts and recorded actions are stacked against abstract vignettes that leave an impression, but do not tell a story to the reader. By the poem's end, the prose has created a feeling rather than a story.

Charles Bernstein is a New York City-based poet, essayist, theorist, and scholar. While at Harvard University, he wrote his thesis on Gertrude Stein and Ludwig Wittgenstein; he later became a founding member of the Language poetry movement. As a publisher and editor of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, Bernstein left a lasting mark on the poetry scene. In an interview with Bradford Senning for the online journal Readme, Bernstein said, "I want to engage the materials of the culture, derange them as they have deranged me, sound them out, as they sound me out."

Bernstein's poem "Gertrude and Ludwig's Bogus Adventure" captures the absurd playfulness found in much of his work. The lines are nonsensical, but they still leave an impression of an adventure taken, though a clear path is never laid out for the reader:

Notorious novelty—I'd settle for a good

Cup of Chase & Sand-borne—though when

The strings are broken on the guitar

You can always use it as a coffee table. (7–10)

The alliteration and rhythm of the language are at least as engaging as the sum of the words. By the poem's end, the reader is thoroughly disoriented, yet grounded within the language of the work.

Robert Grenier is considered one of the most important voices of Language poetry. He categorizes his work as "minimalist" poetry and frequently works by hand. His work "Sentences" is singular in approach and practice, and in retrospect can be viewed as a precursor to the e-poetry that would be produced in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The work is a box containing five hundred index cards, some printed with complete phrases and some with just a few words. The cards are not organized in any sequence, thus offering a "chance" reading with each round. "Sentences" has been called a poem made of thoughts, rather than a complete work. Despite the fact that there is no one way of reading the work, after spending enough time with it, a reader will begin to develop associations between the cards. One card says, "lined up of trees," while another says, "AUTOMOBILE / passing in the rain / see its headlights," leaving it up to the reader to surmise what it all means.

A member of the West Coast contingent of the Language poetry movement, Lyn Hejinian was the founder of Tuumba Press, for which she served as editor from 1976 to 1984 and then again upon its revival in 1999, and was the coeditor (with poet Barrett Watten) of Poetics Journal from 1981 to 1999. She was also, with Travis Ortiz, a coeditor and codirector of Atelos, a literary project founded in 1995 to commission and publish a projected fifty volumes of genre-bending poetry. Hejinian's work is known for being influential in experimental and avant-garde poetics, and it possesses "an unusual lyricism and descriptive engagement with the everyday" ("Lyn Hejinian"). In her poetry, Hejinian explores the way language engages with politics by examining the consequences of such language. She was also more open than her fellow Language poets to incorporating confession and realism into her poetry. Her most famous works include the books My Life (1980, rev. 1987 and 2002), My Life and My Life in the Nineties (2013) which is partly (though not conventionally) autobiographical, and a collection of essays called The Language of Inquiry (2002). Other well-known collections include Tribunal (2019), The Book of a Thousand Eyes (2012), and The Fatalist (2003).

"To Achieve Reality" is from Hejinian's 2012 collection, The Book of a Thousand Eyes. Making reference to "the warlords of Mycenae / . . . storming / Troy" (15–17) and to "recorded words" (6) as "a small memento meant to trigger memories" (7), the work is impenetrable, yet hypnotizing in its use of language. The poem begins with the lines, "To achieve reality (where objects thrive on people's passions), enormous effort / and continuous social interactions are required, and I can't get started / without you. Not here—over there's a better place to begin a funny story" (1–3). Intricate line breaks mark the rhythm of the poem, and the detailed use of language captures something violently nostalgic and sad by the poem's end.

Susan Howe's reputation as a poet goes well beyond the Language movement. Considered a preeminent voice of her generation, Howe produces work that is deeply layered and allusive, often focused on American history and primary documents. Her book My Emily Dickinson (1985) is a classic hybrid work that is part literary criticism, part biography of Dickinson, and part meditation on Howe's connection to the work. She is associated with the Language poets because of her deconstructionist attitude towards grammar and syntax, and often, her work features words that are upside down or crossed out. Heavy use of white space creates a meaning between words that is as impactful as the words themselves.

Howe's extended poem "Cabbage Gardens" features an eclectic use of form. Many lines of the poem are stacked one on top of the other in single or small groupings of words. For example, in one section she writes,

The past

will overtake

alien force

our house

formed

of my mind

to enter (Howe 85)

The words resist narrative, but the short, syncopated phrases create tension and energy of their own. Then, the poem suddenly opens up to include longer verses that use vivid imagery from nature, the landscape surrounding the speaker, and ethereal objects. As with much of Howe's work, the poem is haunting in its tone and allusive in its meaning.

A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Bob Perelman is a poet, critic, and translator whose work layers violence, memory, and commercialization to create disjointed syntax searching for an alternative connection between body and language. A part of the West Coast Language movement, Perlman edited Writing/Talks (1985), a collection of talks given by Language poets such as Alan Davies, Robert Grenier, and Lyn Hejinian, covering topics such as the human body, politics, popular culture, and writing. Perelman is also a celebrated poet in his own right and has published more than a dozen collections.

Perelman's poem "Confession" is a dizzying collage of aliens, desire, poetry (referenced within the poem), pop culture characters, and family. The order of phrases builds momentum within the language, as Perelman bleeds one reference into another. In one instance, he references the poetry anthologies he sees in college bookstores, then compares them to models in magazines, saying one is not so different from the other, at least to him:

There's the sexy

underwear poem, the sturdy workboot poem

you could wear to a party

in a pinch, the little blaspheming

dress poem. There's variety, you say:

the button-down oxford with offrhymed cuffs. (24–29)

As he reaches the end of his poetic language race, Perelman asks the reader how one can truly define an object, and what tools are being used to do so. Who is actually in control of language and meaning?

Bibliography

Armantrout, Rae. “Bees.” Poetry, vol. 208, no. 3, June 2016, p. 255. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=prf&AN=115833090&site=ehost-live. Accessed 2 Dec. 2024.

Armantrout, Rae. “Fiction.” Veil: New & Selected Poems, Jan. 2001, pp. 18–21. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=prf&AN=82449572&site=ehost-live. Accessed 2 Dec. 2024.

Bernstein, Charles. My Way: Speeches and Poems. U of Chicago P, 1999.

"A Brief Guide to Language Poetry." Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, 18 May 2004, poets.org/text/brief-guide-language-poetry. Accessed 2 Dec. 2024.

"Charles Bernstein." Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/charles-bernstein. Accessed 2 Dec. 2024.

Hejinian, Lyn. The Book of a Thousand Eyes. Omnidawn Publishing, 2012.

Howe, Susan. Frame Structures: Early Poems, 1974–1979. New Directions, 1996.

Lazer, Hank. “Radical Collages.” Nation, vol. 247, no. 1, July 1988, pp. 24–26. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=14444777&site=ehost-live. Accessed 2 Dec. 2024.

"Lyn Hejinian." Poetry Foundation, 2024, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/lyn-hejinian. Accessed 2 Dec. 2024.

Perelman, Bob. "Confession." Ten to One: Selected Poems, Wesleyan UP / UP of New England, 1999, pp. 205–07. www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58547/confession-56d23d051bf73. Accessed 2 Dec. 2024.

Perloff, Marjorie. "After Language Poetry: Innovation and Its Theoretical Discontents." University of Pennsylvania, writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/perloff/after‗langpo.html. Accessed 2 Dec. 2024.

"Rae Armantrout." Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/rae-armantrout. Accessed 2 Dec. 2024.

Reinfeld, Linda. Language Poetry: Writing as Rescue. Louisiana State UP, 1992.