The American Century: Literature since 1945 723“emphasizing a spectrum of writing that places attention primarily on language.”
They were, they explained, intent on “ways of making meaning” and taking nothing
for granted, “neither vocabulary, grammar, process, shape, syntax, program, or
subject matters.” Their journal lasted from 1981 until 1984, dedicated throughout
that period to its mission of “repossessing the word.” It was followed in 1984 by an
extensive anthology of pieces from the different issues. Then, two years later, two
further anthologies appeared, “Language” Poetries edited by Douglas Messerli and
In the American Tree: Language, Realism, Poetry edited by Ron Silliman (1946–). In
the American Tree was particularly groundbreaking and influential. Silliman,
himself an accomplished language poet, explained in his introductory essay that the
issues debated in and by language poetry were “not to be underestimated.” They
included “the nature of reality,” “the nature of the individual,” “the function of
language in the constitution of either realm.” The debate, Silliman added, was
“situated within the larger question of what, in the last part of the twentieth century,
it means to be human.” With that, language poetry boldly announced itself as a
leading register of its times, and among the most important of contemporary
American poetic forms.
What it means to be human covers a lot of territory, of course, even if the meanings
are delimited to one or two decades. Beyond a commitment to writing as rescue,
repossessing the word and restoring the reader, language poets shoot off in a number
of directions. Robert Grenier, for example, shows an interest in visual as well as sonic
design. He has published several books in special formats. Sentences (1978), for
instance, consists of five hundred poems on small index cards. CAMBRIDGE M’ASS
(1979) is 265 poems on a large poster. What I Believe Transpiration/Transpiring
Minnesota (1989) is composed of photocopied pages, most of which are handwritten
poems “drawn” from the other side of the paper, as if the poet were writing with his
left hand. Barrett Watten, whose books include Frame: 1971–1990 (1994), is a more
formidable writer, a radical formalist who calls for “resistance between writer and
reader.” Quoting with approval De Kooning’s remark, “I keep painting until I’ve
painted myself out of the picture,” Watten pursues “anarchy of production,” verbal
forms so disjunctive and detached that their author is conspicuous only by his
absence. An understanding of the political implications of language poetry has led
Bob Perelman to a satirical view of consumer society, and a search for the strange
and unsettling. In books like Braille (1975), Captive Audience (1988), and Virtual
Reality (1993), he has tried to answer his own call for a “defamiliarization” of poetry
by removing it from the comforting orbit of the oral. “Unlike the oral poet,” Perelman
has said, “who is reinforcing what the community already knows, the didactic writer
will always have something new, and, possibly, unacceptable to get across.” And, to
that extent, he clearly sees his own poetic project as didactic. Similarly political in
intent, Bruce Andrews has declared his allegiance to a radical poetic practice,
involving what he terms “an infinitizing, a wide-open exuberance, a perpetual
motion machine, a transgression.” “Are ‘make it new’ and ‘make it even’ compatible?”
one poem, “Species Means Guilt” (1992), asks. And his cunning machines made out
of words seems always to be debating the possibility of an answer.GGray_c05.indd 723ray_c 05 .indd 723 8 8/1/2011 7:31:41 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 41 PM