Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

Apex of the M to Thoughts about Engagement
From: Marjorie Perloff
Subject: Apex of the M
Dear Friends:
I was pleased to get the most recent Apex of the M and read the poetry with
interest but I must say I was dismayed by the manifesto "The Contextual
Imperative," put out by the editors.
Certainly, the post-language generation has every right to want to move in
different directions–that’s only logical–but the slight on the L poets vis-a-vis
politics seems entirely misguided. The editors write "language poetry, in
reproducing and mimicking the methods and language of contemporary
capitalism, ultimately commits itself to the same anonymity, alienation, and
social atomization of the subject in history that underlie capitalist geo-politics."
And they go on to compare the language poets to Reagan, Bush, and Quayle!
Come on now! Ron Silliman, Barrett Watten, Bob Perelman, Charles Bernstein,
(the most "political" of the L poets) reproducing and mimicking the language of
contemp capitalism!? Just the opposite was/is true–these poets have worked
very hard and put themselves on the line to break down language so that it
couldn’t function as the voice of "contemporary capitalism." At the same time,
what about the editors? The sentence above is distinguishable from capitalist
geo-politics? How can it be when it is a tissue of cliches. The very phrases
"contemporary capitalism," "social atomization" "capitalist geo-politics" are
nothing but buzz words of the type one hears/sees on TV every minute. Whose
capitalism? Japanese? U.S.? Serb? what’s it really like? What "social
atomization" precisely are we talking about? And let’s look at that language in,
say, Silliman’s work and read it against Quayle’s and see if it really IS like
that.,
And then what in hell is "radical transparency"? Literally, it means that
language is absolutely see-through, which means what language you use
doesn’t matter because you want to get behind it to the Big Ideas. But the
danger of doing this is that you start spouting the language of those "ruling
classes throughout Western history" poets are supposedly opposing.