Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

From: Tom Mandel
Subject: Re: Apex of the M
I originally began this as a private message to Marjorie Perloff, to tell her she’d
hit the nail on the head in her comments on the Apex intro, meaning to quote to
her what Hobbes said of Spinoza – I durst not have spoke so freely (that’s a
paraphrase, source not being handy), being a Language Poet myself (wch when
it happened to me meant being in a loosely-(un)defined and altogether
anonymous group of abt 15-20 folks but now means being in an altogether
over-commented and literally undefinable crowd of ?3-500?), but have decided
to make the comment openly, wanting to add one or two things…
To go from the introduction of the Apex issue in question to the work gathered
therein is an interesting study. Mostly what’s in the issue is the work of poets in
mid-career, many of whom associated (i.e. are associated) with LP – how can
this so-called manifesto claim them for a next or new way?
I believe the editors must understand themselves to have chosen these poets in
mid-career as illustrative of their (the editors’) sense of where poetry needs to
go now, as illustrative of the ideas in the introduction. Thus, the making of
manifestos (manifesti?) and new movements is reduced from that of actually
creating a new poetry to being a thoughtful editor. The surrealists too had their
chosen forebears to bring forward (i.e. Lautreamont), but they were rescuing
work wch had been neglected and even rejected not putting together a table of
contents wch cd as easily have been found in Temblor in the late 80’s
(obviously, somewhat different) or O-blek in the earlier 90’s. Moreover, the
relative proportion of forebears (a few) to active perpetrants of the
revolutionary new poetry (a triple handful) seems more appropriate than in the
case of Apex volume.
Thus new tendencies in poetry as the acts of editors? Sorry, I don’t think so.
It’s hard not to see in this volume a 2d chapter in a different town of the
intentions of the editors of ACTS in SF who invented a term analytic lyric
which they wished to counterpose to Language Poetry, then went around telling
everybody that this was what they wrote. I remember asking Benjamin
Hollander (along with David Levi Strauss, the editor of ACTS) what the term
meant. Mostly, his answer was that it was what I was writing! (I and others, of
course – I don’t mean they were vaunting me in particular) No thanks,
Benjamin, I’m a language poet – i.e. my work, wherever it goes and whoever it
attracts the attention of, is historically located in that tendency. If I write