Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

ones that distinguish LP from "mainstream," ought to be describable, and that’s
what I’d like to hear, provided the describer can communicate clearly.
My own experience: I have read in LP magazines and didn’t get anything out of
them. I also read some essays in a collection about the movement. They didn’t
sound convincing. It’s only because of Ron Silliman’s postings on CAP-L that
I looked into the question again. In an interesting post made some six months
ago, he asserted that the LP movment was in the process of splintering into
multiple sub-groups who no longer shared the same aesthetic bases, and that, in
effect, these groups could no longer "read" each other. I would be curious to
hear whether other Langpoets agree that this is true; and, if so, what are the
differences that make it impossible to care about the writings of other splinter
groups? I hope that no one is going to say it is altogether impossible to discuss
the ideas on which poetry or poetries are based. If so, why subscribe to a
discussion group, and why claim a place in the universe of discourse?
On the question of "music," shouldn’t we admit that the sound techniques of
actual music and verbal texts are too far removed from each other to make this
metaphor at all useful? And if pure sound is all that matters in poetry, why
hasn’t the movement hailed Dame Edith Sitwell as one of its heroes?
A final question: are Laura Riding, Dylan Thomas, John Ashbery, Michael
Palmer, Ann Lauterbach, and Jorie Graham LANGUAGE poets. On what basis
do you determine whether someone is writing LP?