Language poetry

Language poetry is a different way of thinking about poetry that began in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. It was a reaction to the usual ways of writing poetry in America. It came from poets in San Francisco and New York City. The poems were printed in L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E and other magazines.

Language poems made readers think about how words (spoken or written) could come before meanings. Meanings are made by language. "By breaking up poetic language, the poet is requiring the reader to find a new way to approach the text."

Some poets who are connected to this way of writing are Charles Bernstein, Bruce Andrews, Barrett Watten, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman, and Rae Armantrout.

Books

• Andrews, Bruce, and Charles Bernstein, eds. The "L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E" Book (1984)
  • The Politics of Poetic Form: Poetry and Public Policy (1990)
• Bernstein, Charles. A Poetics (1992)
  • Attack of the Difficult Poems: Essays and Inventions (2011)
  • Pitch of Poetry (2016)
• Hejinian, Lyn and Barrett Watten, eds.."A Guide to Poetics Journal: Writing in the Expanded Field, 1982–1998" (2013)
• Hoover, Paul, ed. Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology. New York: Norton, 1994.
• Messerli, Douglas, ed. Language Poetries. (1987)
• Piombino, Nick. Boundary of Blur (1993)
• Silliman, Ron. The New Sentence. (1987)
• Silliman, Ron, ed. In the American Tree. (1986; 2002.) A collection that is a good place to start reading language poetry.