Language poets

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The Language poets (or L = A = N = G = U = A = G = E poets after the magazine of this name) are an American literary group that formed in the 1960s and 1970s.

According to its own understanding, language poetry emphasizes the role of the reader in understanding the meaning of a text. Less emphasis is placed on form and expression, and the poem is viewed as a construct in language and the construction of language. The poetics developed by the Language Poets saw their point of departure in Anglo-American modernism, in particular in the representation of Gertrude Stein , William Carlos Williams , and Louis Zukofsky . Language poetry is an example of poetic postmodernism . Immediate forerunners include the New York School (e.g. Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery ), the Objectivist poets, the Black Mountain School (e.g. Robert Duncan ), Beat Generation poetry, and the San Francisco Renaissance . In the self-understanding of the Language Poets, who have been particularly associated with prose poetry , the natural presence of the author behind the text should be questioned and the material form of the signifier should be pointed out. Language poetry has been a controversial topic in American literary studies since the 1970s. Better- known language poets include Charles Bernstein and Harryette Mullen .

Anthologies

  • Bruce Andrews and Charles Bernstein, eds. The "L = A = N = G = U = A = G = E" Book . Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984.
  • Charles Bernstein, ed. The Politics of Poetic Form: Poetry and Public Policy . New York: Roof, 1990.
  • Douglas Messerli, ed. Language Poetries . New York: New Directions, 1987.

literature

  • Hannah Möckel-Rieke, “ The 'Unfinished Modernity': Language Poetries and the American Poetry of the 80s ”, Amerikastudien 40: 1, 1995
  • George Hartley, Textual Politics and the Language Poets . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.
  • Romana Huk, ed. Assembling Alternatives: Reading Postmodern Poetries Transnationally . Middletown, Conn .: Wesleyan University Press, 2003.
  • Linda Reinfeld, Language Poetry: Writing as Rescue . Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1992.
  • Ann Vickery, Leaving Lines of Gender: A Feminist Genealogy of Language Writing . Middletown, Conn .: Wesleyan University Press, 2000.
  • Barrett Watten, The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics . Middletown, Conn .: Wesleyan University Press, 2003. See especially Chapters 2 and 3.

Web links