xxxiv
introduction
And witness, too, the advent of the Spatialist Poetry of the French poet
Henri Chopin and like-minded writers. Manifestos proliferate in the sec-
ond half of the century, from Spatialism to Scum, from the aesthetic to
the political, every movement wanting to proclaim its name and experi-
mental newness.∞∑
Later, the stress on the materiality of words and the visuality of
the imagination was associated with such movements as L=A=N=
G=U=A=G=E poetry in North America. Founded by Bruce Andrews and
Charles Bernstein, this movement emphasizes the word itself, as evi-
denced in the dramatic and eye-catching separation of letters. In its con-
centration on the very stu√ of language, in its consideration of the mate-
rial of the word as all-important, in its excitement about the process of
writing, at least one group in France can be singled out for comparison
with the poetry on this side of the Atlantic. The close association of the
French poets Emmanuel Hocquard, Olivier Cadiot, Pierre Alféri, Anne-
Marie Albiach, and Claude Royet-Journoud can be roughly considered
the transatlantic equivalent of the poets of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E.
John Ashbery asserts that it is not the often warring factions of po-
etic schools that interest him but individual poets—among them the
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet Leslie Scalapino, for instance, and a few
others. Experimental poetry and anything liberating, Ashbery says, are
what really claim him. Although influenced by the Surrealists, he finds
them too ‘‘restraining’’ to be of continuing interest. Similarly, he finds the
rules of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets too constraining. The French
poets with whom he feels the most a≈nity are Pascalle Monnier, Anne Por-
tugal, Michel Deguy, Jacques Dupin, Dominique Fourcade, Emmanuel
Hocquard, and Franck André Jamme, all of whom are represented in this
volume. His personal reaction is antitraditional, in opposition to the
poetry so often taught in the universities—for example, that of Robert
Lowell and John Berryman. ‘‘I’m always trying to do something I’ve never
done,’’ he says.∞∏
ShapeJohn Berger has entitled a recent collection of essays The Shape of
a Pocket (2001), a phrase that has led me to think about the nature of
poetry. As a heart is shaped by what it loves, and a mind by what it
admires, a voice may gain its surest tones by what the speaker or singer
reads and hears. (The celebrated singer Patti Smith is fascinated by Blake
and Rimbaud, and her verses are recognizably Rimbaudian. She also
admires Blaise Cendrars, to whom she dedicated a poem called ‘‘Ladies
and Gentlemen, Blaise Cendrars Is Not Dead.’’)
The simplest container of them all, a pocket, is sooner or later shaped