Language Poets
Language Poets, emerging in the early 1970s, represent a significant movement in American poetry characterized by their avant-garde approach and emphasis on the materiality of language. The movement is often traced back to the publication of *This*, a magazine edited by Barrett Watten and Robert Grenier, which showcased the works of notable poets like Ron Silliman and Charles Bernstein. This group positioned their work as a continuation of the modernist project, rejecting the traditional bardic forms exemplified by poets such as Walt Whitman.
Radically influenced by the political climate of the Vietnam War, Language Poets adopted nonrepresentational writing and formal experimentation as a means to challenge the dominant lyrical and narrative styles prevalent in creative writing programs. They critiqued mainstream poetic discourse, arguing that it often reinforced ideological narratives supporting governmental policies. By employing innovative linguistic structures, they aimed to subvert conventional rhetoric and highlight language's role as a medium of artistic expression. Despite their relatively small numbers, Language Poets had a lasting impact on the American poetry landscape through a network of small presses and literary magazines, fostering a vibrant community of experimental writers.
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Subject Terms
Language Poets
A group of writers whose work foregrounds the materiality of linguistic formations and procedures
The Language Poets became a prominent literary force in the San Francisco and New York City areas during the 1970’s. These poets had a tremendous impact on American poetry to the extent that their work intersected with more mainstream poetic movements as a critique of the Vietnam conflict. At the same time, the Language Poets extended the Beat Poets’ critique of American culture in general.
The official beginning of the Language Poetry movement is generally considered 1971 because the first issue of This, a magazine dedicated to avant-garde poetry and fiction and edited by Barrett Watten and Robert Grenier, was published in that year. Among the poets published in the issues of This during its existence from 1971 to 1978 were Ron Silliman, Charles Bernstein, Bernadette Mayer, Hannah Weiner, and the editors themselves. Although some poets emphasized the different poetic strategies used by individual writers, the Language Poets as a whole viewed their work as the completion of the modernist project, which had emphasized the medium itself as the subject matter of artistic production. Self-consciously following this modernist tradition that led back to nineteenth century poet Emily Dickinson and included early twentieth century avant-garde writers such as Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and the Objectivists, the Language Poets rejected the bardic tradition of the other major nineteenth century American poet, Walt Whitman. This rejection had culminated in the semi-religious invocations of Allen Ginsberg and the Beats beginning in the 1950’s.
Radically politicized by the Vietnam War, poets such as Watten and Silliman emphasized nonrepresentational writing and formal experimentation as a strategy against the voice-based lyric and narrative tradition that dominated creative writing programs in universities from the early to the late twentieth century. At the same time, these poetic strategies sought to undermine the ideological abuse of language by an American presidential administration seeking support for its intervention in the Vietnam conflict.
Adopting continental literary theory to denaturalize the “conversational” discourse of mainstream poetry, the Language Poets argued that the use of “nonpoetic” discourse by the Beats and other countercultural poetic movements—including certain tendencies within ethnopoetics, Deep Image poetics, and black aesthetics—functioned to reinforce the predominant discourse of a government and its institutions that they allegedly opposed. Thus, for the Language Poets, avant-garde linguistic structures and syntax that emphasized the materiality of writing, such as the work of Weiner, and orality, such as the sound-texts of Steve McCaffery, constituted another weapon to be deployed against the rhetoric of the ruling class.
Impact
Although they began as small core of writers on the West and East Coasts, the Language Poets had an impact disproportionate to their numbers. Through a multitude of small literary magazines such as Avec, Chain, and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E; small publishers such as the Figures, Telephone Books, and Roof Books; and reading series in San Francisco, Milwaukee, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City, the Language Poets greatly altered the landscape of American poetry during this era.
Bibliography
Andrews, Bruce, and Charles Bernstein, eds. The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984.
Reinfield, Linda. Language Poetry. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992.
Williman, Ron. In the American Tree: Language, Realism, Poetry. Orono: University of Maine, 1986.