TheLanguage poets (orL=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, after the magazine of that name) are anavant-garde group or tendency inUnited States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The poets included:Bernadette Mayer,Leslie Scalapino,Stephen Rodefer,Bruce Andrews,Charles Bernstein,Ron Silliman,Barrett Watten,Lyn Hejinian,Tom Mandel,Bob Perelman,Rae Armantrout,Alan Davies,Carla Harryman,Clark Coolidge,Hannah Weiner,Susan Howe,James Sherry, andTina Darragh.^[1]

Language poetry emphasizes the reader's role in bringing meaning out of a work. It plays down expression, seeing the poem as a construction in and of language itself. In more theoretical terms, it challenges the "natural" presence of a speaker behind the text; and emphasizes thedisjunction and themateriality of thesignifier.^[2] These poets favorprose poetry, especially in longer and non-narrative forms.^[2]

In developing theirpoetics, members of the Language school took as their starting point the emphasis on method evident in themodernist tradition, particularly as represented byGertrude Stein,William Carlos Williams, andLouis Zukofsky. Language poetry is an example of poeticpostmodernism. Its immediate postmodern precursors were theNew American poets, a term including theNew York School, theObjectivist poets, theBlack Mountain School, theBeat poets, and theSan Francisco Renaissance.

Language poetry has been acontroversial topic in Americanletters from the 1970s to the present. Even the name has been controversial: while a number of poets and critics have used the name of the journal to refer to the group, many others have chosen to use the term, when they used it at all, without theequals signs. The terms "language writing" and "language-centered writing" are also commonly used, and are perhaps the most generic terms. None of the poets associated with the tendency has used the equal signs when referring to the writing collectively. Its use in some critical articles can be taken as an indicator of the author's outsider status.^[3] There is also debate about whether or not a writer can be called a language poet without being part of that specific coterie; is it a style or is it a group of people? In his introduction toSan Francisco Beat: Talking With the Poets (San Francisco, City Lights, 2001 p.vii) David Meltzer writes: "The language cadres never truly left college. They've always been good students, and now they're excellent teachers. The professionalization and rationalization of poetry in the academy took hold and routinized the teaching and writing of poetry." Later in the volume (p. 128) poet Joanne Kyger comments: "The Language school I felt was a kind of an alienating intellectualization of the energies of poetry. It carried it away from the source. It may have been a housecleaning from confessional poetry, but I found it a sterilization of poetry."

Online writing samples of many language poets can be found on internet sites, including blogs and sites maintained by authors and through gateways such as theElectronic Poetry Center,PennSound, andUbuWeb.

The movement has been highly decentralized. On the West Coast, an early seed of language poetry was the launch ofThis magazine, edited byRobert Grenier andBarrett Watten, in 1971.L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, edited byBruce Andrews andCharles Bernstein, ran from 1978 to 1982, and was published in New York. It featured poetics, forums on writers in the movement, and themes such as "The Politics of Poetry" and "Reading Stein".Ron Silliman's poetry newsletterTottel's (1970–81),^[4]Bruce Andrews's selections in a special issue ofToothpick (1973), as well asLyn Hejinian's editing of Tuumba Press, andJames Sherry's editing ofRoof magazine also contributed to the development of ideas in language poetry. The first significant collection of language-centered poetics was the article, "The Politics of the Referent," edited bySteve McCaffery for the Toronto-based publication,Open Letter (1977).

In an essay from the first issue ofThis, Grenier declared: "I HATE SPEECH". Grenier's ironic statement (itself a speech act), and a questioning attitude to the referentiality of language, became central to language poets. Ron Silliman, in the introduction to his anthologyIn the American Tree, appealed to a number of young U.S. poets who were dissatisfied with the work of theBlack Mountain andBeat poets.

The range of poetry published that focused on "language" inThis,Tottel's,L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, and also in several other key publications and essays of the time, established the field of discussion that would emerge as Language (or L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E) poetry.

During the 1970s, a number of magazines published poets who would become associated with the Language movement. These includedA Hundred Posters (edited byAlan Davies),Big Deal,Dog City,Hills,Là Bas,MIAM,Oculist Witnesses,QU, andRoof.Poetics Journal, which published writings in poetics and was edited byLyn Hejinian andBarrett Watten, appeared from 1982 to 1998. Significant early gatherings of Language writing included Bruce Andrews's selection inToothpick (1973); Silliman's selection "The Dwelling Place: 9 Poets" inAlcheringa, (1975), and Charles Bernstein's "A Language Sampler," inThe Paris Review (1982).

Certain poetry reading series, especially in New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, were important venues for the performance of this new work, and for the development of dialogue and collaboration among poets. Most important were Ear Inn reading series in New York, founded in 1978 by Ted Greenwald and Charles Bernstein and later organized throughJames Sherry's Segue Foundation and curated by Mitch Highfill, Jeanne Lance, Andrew Levy, Rob Fitterman, Laynie Brown, Alan Davies, andThe Poetry Society of New York; Folio Books in Washington, D.C., founded by Doug Lang; and the Grand Piano reading series in San Francisco, which was curated byBarrett Watten,Ron Silliman,Tom Mandel,Rae Armantrout,Ted Pearson,Carla Harryman, andSteve Benson at various times.

Poets, some of whom have been mentioned above, who were associated with the first wave of Language poetry include:Rae Armantrout,Stephen Rodefer (1940–2015),Steve Benson,Abigail Child,Clark Coolidge,Tina Darragh,Alan Davies,Carla Harryman,P. Inman,Lynne Dryer,Madeline Gins,Michael Gottlieb,Fanny Howe,Susan Howe,Tymoteusz Karpowicz,Jackson Mac Low (1922–2004),Tom Mandel,Bernadette Mayer,Steve McCaffery,Michael Palmer,Ted Pearson,Bob Perelman,Nick Piombino,Peter Seaton (1942–2010),Joan Retallack,Erica Hunt,James Sherry,Jean Day,Kit Robinson,Ted Greenwald,Leslie Scalapino (1944–2010),Diane Ward,Rosmarie Waldrop, andHannah Weiner (1928–1997). This list accurately reflects the high proportion offemale poets across the spectrum of the Language writing movement.^[6]African-American poets associated with the movement include Hunt,Nathaniel Mackey, andHarryette Mullen.

Language poetry emphasizes the reader's role in bringing meaning out of a work. It developed in part in response to what poets considered the uncritical use of expressive lyric sentiment among earlier poetry movements. In the 1950s and 1960s, certain groups of poets had followedWilliam Carlos Williams in his use ofidiomatic American English rather than what they considered the 'heightened', or overtly poetic language favored by theNew Criticism movement.New York School poets likeFrank O'Hara andthe Black Mountain group emphasized both speech and everyday language in their poetry and poetics.

In contrast, some of the Language poets emphasizedmetonymy,synecdoche and extreme instances ofparatactical structures in their compositions, which, even when employing everyday speech, created a far different texture. The result is often alien and difficult to understand at first glance, which is what Language poetry intends: for the reader to participate in creating the meaning of the poem.^[7]

Watten's & Grenier's magazineThis (andThis Press which Watten edited), along with the magazineL=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, published work by notableBlack Mountain poets such asRobert Creeley andLarry Eigner. Silliman considers Language poetry to be a continuation (albeit incorporating a critique) of the earlier movements. Watten has emphasized the discontinuity between theNew American poets, whose writing, he argues, privileged self-expression, and the Language poets, who see the poem as a construction in and of language itself. In contrast, Bernstein has emphasized the expressive possibilities of working with constructed, and even found, language.

Gertrude Stein, particularly in her writing afterTender Buttons, andLouis Zukofsky, in his book-length poemA, are the modernist poets who most influenced the Language school. In the postwar period,John Cage,Jackson Mac Low, and poets of theNew York School (John Ashbery,Frank O'Hara,Ted Berrigan) andBlack Mountain School (Robert Creeley,Charles Olson, andRobert Duncan) are most recognizable as precursors to the Language poets. Many of these poets used procedural methods based on mathematical sequences and other logical organising devices to structure their poetry. This practice proved highly useful to the language group. The application of process, especially at the level of thesentence, was to become the basic tenet of languagepraxis. Stein's influence was related to her own frequent use of language divorced from reference in her own writings. The language poets also drew on the philosophical works ofLudwig Wittgenstein, especially the concepts oflanguage-games, meaning as use, andfamily resemblance among different uses, as the solution to theProblem of universals.

In many ways, what Language poetry is is still being determined. Most of the poets whose work falls within the bounds of the Language school are still alive and still active contributors. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Language poetry was widely received as a significant movement in innovative poetry in the U.S., a trend accentuated by the fact that some of its leading proponents took up academic posts in thePoetics,Creative Writing andEnglish Literature departments in prominent universities (University of Pennsylvania,SUNY Buffalo,Wayne State University,University of California, Berkeley,University of California, San Diego,University of Maine, theIowa Writers' Workshop).

Language poetry also developed affiliations with literary scenes outside the States, notably England, Canada (through theKootenay school of writing in Vancouver),France, theUSSR,Brazil,Finland,Sweden,New Zealand, andAustralia. It had a particularly interesting relation to the UKavant-garde: in the 1970s and 1980s there were extensive contacts between American Language poets and veteran UK writers likeTom Raworth andAllen Fisher, or younger figures such asCaroline Bergvall,Maggie O'Sullivan,cris cheek, andKen Edwards (whose magazineReality Studios was instrumental in the transatlantic dialogue between American and UKavant-gardes). Other writers, such asJ.H. Prynne and those associated with the so-called"Cambridge" poetry scene (Rod Mengham,Douglas Oliver,Peter Riley) were perhaps more skeptical about language poetry and its associatedpolemics and theoretical documents, though Geoff Ward wrote a book about the phenomenon.

A second generation of poets influenced by the Language poets includesEric Selland (also a noted translator of modern Japanese poetry),Lisa Robertson,Juliana Spahr, theKootenay School poets,conceptual writing,Flarf collectives, and many others.

A significant number of women poets, and magazines and anthologies of innovative women's poetry, have been associated with language poetry on both sides of the Atlantic. They often represent a distinct set of concerns. Among the poets areLeslie Scalapino,Madeline Gins,Susan Howe,Lyn Hejinian,Carla Harryman,Rae Armantrout,Jean Day,Hannah Weiner,Tina Darragh,Erica Hunt,Lynne Dreyer,Harryette Mullen,Beverly Dahlen,Johanna Drucker,Abigail Child, andKaren Mac Cormack; among the magazinesHOW/ever, later the e-based journalHOW2; and among the anthologiesOut of Everywhere: Linguistically Innovative Poetry by Women in North America & the UK, edited by Maggie O'Sullivan for Reality Street Editions in London (1996) and Mary Margaret Sloan'sMoving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women (Jersey City: Talisman Publishers, 1998).

Ten of the Language poets, each of whom at one time curated the reading series at the San Francisco coffee house of that name, collaborated to writeThe Grand Piano, "an experiment in collective autobiography" published in ten small volumes. Editing and communication for the collaboration was accomplished over email. Authors of The Grand Piano wereLyn Hejinian,Carla Harryman,Rae Armantrout,Tom Mandel,Ron Silliman,Barrett Watten,Steve Benson,Bob Perelman,Ted Pearson, andKit Robinson. An eleventh member of the project,Alan Bernheimer, served as an archivist and contributed one essay on the filmmakerWarren Sonbert. The authors of The Grand Piano sought to reconnect their writing practices and to "recall and contextualize events from the period of the late 1970s."^[8][9] Each volume ofThe Grand Piano features essays by all ten authors in different sequence; often responding to prompts and problems arising from one another's essays in the series.

Some poets, such asNorman Finkelstein, have stressed their own ambiguous relationship to "Language poetry", even after decades of fruitful engagement. Finkelstein, in a discussion with Mark Scroggins aboutThe Grand Piano, points to a "risk" when previously marginalized poets try to write their own literary histories, "not the least of which is a self-regard bordering on narcissism".^[10]

• List of poetry groups and movements
• List of literary movements

• Allen, Donald, ed.The New American Poetry 1945-1960. New York:Grove Press, 1960.
• Andrews, Bruce, and Charles Bernstein, eds.The "L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E" Book. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984.
• Bernstein, Charles, ed. "Language Sampler," Paris Review, 1982
  • "43 Poets (1984)." boundary 2
  • The Politics of Poetic Form: Poetry and Public Policy. New York: Roof, 1990.
• Hejinian, Lyn and Barrett Watten, eds.."A Guide to Poetics Journal: Writing in the Expanded Field, 1982–1998." Wesleyan University Press, 2013
• Hoover, Paul, ed.Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology. New York: Norton, 1994.
• Messerli, Douglas, ed.Language Poetries. New York:New Directions, 1987.
• Silliman, Ron, ed.In the American Tree. Orono, Me.:National Poetry Foundation, 1986; reprint ed. with a new afterword, 2002. An anthology of language poetry that serves as a very useful primer.

• Andrews, Bruce.Paradise and Method. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996.
• Beach, Christopher, ed.Artifice and Indeterminacy: An Anthology of New Poetics. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1998
• Bernstein, Charles.Content's Dream: Essays 1975–1984. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1985
  • A Poetics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992
  • My Way; Speeches and Poems. University of Chicago Press, 1999
  • Attack of the Difficult Poems: Essays and Inventions. University of Chicago Press, 2011
  • Pitch of Poetry. University of Chicago Press, 2016.
• Davies, Alan.Signage. New York: Roof Books, 1987.
• Friedlander, Ben.Simulcast: Four Experiments in Criticism. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004.
• Hartley, George.Textual Politics and the Language Poets. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.
• Hejinian, Lyn.The Language of Inquiry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
• Howe, Susan.My Emily Dickinson. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1988. Rpt, New Directions, 2007.
  • The Birth-Mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1993.
• Huk, Romana, ed.Assembling Alternatives: Reading Postmodern Poetries Transnationally. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2003.
• Lutzkanova-Vassileva, Albena, "The Testimonies of Russian and American Postmodern Poetry: Reference, Trauma, and History." New York: Bloomsbury, 2013
• McCaffery, Steve.North of Intention: Critical Writings 1973–1986. New York: Roof Books, 1986.
  • Prior to Meaning: The Protosemantic and Poetics. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 2001.
• Perelman, Bob.The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996.
• Piombino, Nick.Boundary of Blur. New York: Roof Books, 1993
  • Theoretical Objects.Green Integer Press, 1999.
• Ratcliffe, Stephen.Listening to Reading. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000
• Reinfeld, Linda.Language Poetry: Writing as Rescue. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1992.
• Silliman, Ron.The New Sentence. New York: Roof Books, 1987. An early collection of talks and essays that situates language poetry into contemporary political thought, linguistics, and literary tradition. See esp. section II.
• Scalapino, Leslie.How Phenomena Appear to Unfold. Elmwood: Potes & Poets, 1989.
  • Objects in the Terrifying Tense / Longing from Taking Place. Roof Books, 1994.
  • The Public World / Syntactically Impermanence. Wesleyan University Press, 1999.
  • How Phenomena Appear to Unfold. Litmus Press, 2011.
• Vickery, Ann.Leaving Lines of Gender: A Feminist Genealogy of Language Writing. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2000.
• Ward, Geoff.Language Poetry and the American Avant-Garde. Keele: British Association for American Studies, 1993.
• Watten, Barrett.The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2003. See esp. chaps. 2 and 3.
  • Total Syntax. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984.

• Armantrout, Rae.True. Berkeley, CA: Atelos | (Small Press Distribution), 1998.ISBN 978-1-891190-03-2
• Armantrout, Rae.Collected Prose. San Diego: Singing Horse, 2007.
• Davies, Alan.Candor. Berkeley, CA, 1990.
• Mandel, Tom.Realism. Providence, RI: Burning Deck.
• Perelman, Bob, et al.The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography. Detroit, MI: Mode A/This Press, 2006.ISBN 978-0-9790198-0-7. Described as an ongoing experiment in collective autobiography by ten writers identified with Language poetry in San Francisco. The project will consist of 10 volumes in all.
• Piombino, Nick.Fait Accompli. Queens, NY: Factory School, 2006.
• Scalapino, Leslie.Zither & Autobiography. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan, 2003.
• Silliman, Ron.Under Albany. Cambridge, UK:Salt Publishing, 2004.ISBN 978-1-84471-051-5
• Watten, Barrett.Bad History. Berkeley, CA: Atelos | Small Press Distribution, 1998.ISBN 978-1-891190-02-5

• Andrews, Bruce, "L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E", inThe Little Magazine in Contemporary America, ed. Ian Morris and Joanne Diaz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). Available online via Andrew's faculty page at Fordham University:Fordham English Connect.
• Bartlett, Lee, "What is 'Language Poetry'?"Critical Inquiry 12 (1986): 741–752. Available through JStor.
• Bernstein, Charles, "The Expanded Field of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E," inRoutledge Companion to Experimental Literature, ed. Joe Bray, Alison Gibbons, Brian McHale (London: Routledge, 2012).
• Greer, Michael, "Ideology and Theory in Recent Experimental Writing or, the Naming of "Language Poetry," boundary 2, vol. 16, no. 2/3 (Winter/Spring, 1989), pp. 335–355.
• Koirala, Saroj, "Linking Words with the World: The Language Poetry Mission",Tribhuvan University Journal, vol. 29 (2016), no. 1, pp. 175–190.doi:10.3126/tuj.v29i1.25968.
• Perloff, Marjorie,"The Word as Such: LANGUAGE: Poetry in the Eighties",American Poetry Review (May–June 1984), 13(3):15–22.

• Douglas Messerli'sIntroduction to the 2003 edition of"Language" Poetries (New Directions, 1987)
• Barrett Watten, "On First Looking into Wikipedia's 'Language'" (2006 blog post)
• Suman Chakraborty, "Meaning, Unmeaning and the Poetics of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E" (2008)
• Electronic Poetry Center
• L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Magazine online archive
• Bruce Andrews-edited issue ofToothpick (1973)
• The Dwelling Place: 9 Poets, Ron Silliman-edited issue ofAlcheringa" (1974), viaJ. Henry Chunko blog of Danny Snelson (archived from theoriginal on 2011-07-27)
• Index for full run ofThis magazine
• Bruce Andrews, "THE POETICS OF L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E"
• Leevi Lehto, "In the Un-American Tree: The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poetries and Their Aftermath, with a Special Reference to Charles Bernstein Translated" (one of the keynote addresses at the International Conference on 20th Century American Poetry, hosted byCentral China Normal University,Wuhan, China, July 21, 2007)
• Silliman's Blog: A weblog focused on contemporary poetry and poetics
• Charles Bernstein author page and web log
• New Poetics Colloquium proceedings (1985)
• Robert Archambeau, "Bleed-Over and Decadence, or: No Bones About It, They're Talking About Language Poetry" (2005 blog post)
• The Grand Piano website devoted to the "collective autobiography" by 10 of the so-called "West Coast" group of Language poets
• Geoff Ward,Language Poetry and the American Avant-Garde (1993)
• Andrew Epstein,"Verse vs. Verse: The Language Poets are taking over the academy. But will success spoil their integrity?" (Lingua Franca, Sept. 2000: 45–54)
• Jerome McGann,"Contemporary Poetry, Alternate Routes" (chapter from his 1988 book,Social Values and Poetic Acts)
• Kate Lilley,"This L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E" (1997),Jacket Magazine website
• Eleana Kim,Language Poetry: Dissident Practices and the Makings of a Movement (1994), with an extensive bibliography