16 Facts About Language poets

Language poets are an avant-garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Language poets poetry emphasizes the reader's role in bringing meaning out of a work.

In developing their poetics, members of the Language poets school took as their starting point the emphasis on method evident in the modernist tradition, particularly as represented by Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, and Louis Zukofsky.

Language poets poetry has been a controversial topic in American letters from the 1970s to the present.

None of the Language poets associated with the tendency has used the equal signs when referring to the writing collectively.

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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 the Electronic Poetry Center, PennSound, and UbuWeb.

Ron Silliman, in the introduction to his anthology In the American Tree, appealed to a number of young US Language poets who were dissatisfied with the work of the Black Mountain and Beat Language poets.

African-American Language poets associated with the movement include Hunt, Nathaniel Mackey, and Harryette Mullen.

Language poets poetry emphasizes the reader's role in bringing meaning out of a work.

In contrast, some of the Language poets emphasized metonymy, synecdoche and extreme instances of paratactical 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 poets poetry intends: for the reader to participate in creating the meaning of the poem.

Many of these Language poets used procedural methods based on mathematical sequences and other logical organising devices to structure their poetry.

The language poets drew on the philosophical works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, especially the concepts of language-games, meaning as use, and family resemblance among different uses, as the solution to the Problem of universals.

Language poets poetry developed affiliations with literary scenes outside the States, notably England, Canada, France, the USSR, Brazil, Finland, Sweden, New Zealand, and Australia.

Second generation of poets influenced by the Language poets includes Eric Selland, Lisa Robertson, Juliana Spahr, the Kootenay School poets, conceptual writing, Flarf collectives, and many others.

Finkelstein, in a discussion with Mark Scroggins about The Grand Piano, points to a "risk" when previously marginalized Language poets try to write their own literary histories, "not the least of which is a self-regard bordering on narcissism".