Douglas Messerli

In the original Amazon entry for this bk, the title doesn't have the word "Language" in quotes. It's precisely this sort of genericizing of language (the removal of even the most apparently minor deviances to 'correct' form: ie: quotes or unusual capitalization or whatnot are too deviant from 'proper' form that they're removed as if they're mistakes or some such) vs the sensitivity of 'Language Writing' & the like that makes 'Language Writing' (or "Language" Writing) 'important'.

But, 1st , yet-another-personal-anecdote-from-tENT-that's-pretty-much-irrelevant-to-this-bk-but-rings-w/-personal-significance-for-this-reviewer:

In 1979, I was a participant in the "Festival of Disappearing Art(s)" organized by the Merzaum Collective & scheduled to occur at both the Red Door Hall in Baltimore & at the WPA (Washington Project for the Arts) in Washington, DC. On Sunday, May 6th, at 3PM I was to 'perform' my "T he Phantom of t he Opera" at the WPA. Douglas Messerli attended b/c he was vaguely familiar w/ me thru L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Magazine & was curious about what I'd do. Given that this was a daytime thing (most of the performances were at nite) it didn't seem very likely that anyone wd attend so my co-performer(s) decided to participate in a political protest that day wch we all agreed was more important anyway. Messerli was the only audience member I can (re)member being there. He was disappointed by its not happening & I was flattered that he cared. That's biased me in his favor to this day.

Back to the review: I feel a close connection to this anthology. People that I know or at least met once are in it: Jackson Mac Low, Hannah Weiner, Ray DiPalma, James Sherry, Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, Alan Davies, Diane Ward. I publish tapes by many of these folks - including Tina Darragh. Having this anthology come out was exciting, seeing a 'movement' take more & more concrete shape. In Messerli's intro he writes:

"I have increasingly encountered general readers, students, and professors who, cornering me, ask: "But tell us, what is 'Language' poetry?"

"That question, whether friendly or hostile, delivers to the muscles of my back and shoulders a slight flinch. How much it presumes!-that there is a single definition or a unified complex of ideas which applies to "Language" poetry, and underlying that assumption, that there is an identifiable group of poets which can be described as writing whatever one defines "Language" writing as being."

Note his use of 'Language' & "Language". Later, he explains that "The poets in this anthology have all foregrounded language itself as the project of their writing. For these poets, language is not something that explains or translates experience but is the source of experience." Write on. Write: "off".… (meer)

I picked up a used edition of Douglas Messerli's From the Other Side of the Century: A New American Poetry 1960-1990 at Moe's in Berkeley at a critical moment of reading for me. I still have (and cherish) the book now. The book is conceived as a sequel of sorts to Donald Allen's The New American Poetry. He rejects Allen's The Postmoderns (along with other anthologies edited by Michael Lally and Eliot Weinberger) for not presenting "a significant enough selection of [...:] poets to help readers contextualize the work" and for not making selections based on " aesthetic viewpoints." My understanding is that Messerli wanted to anthologize writers whose work came too early for New American Poetry's historical range but whose work became more widely read after the Allen anthology. He implies in the introduction that he wants to include poets who were influenced by Allen's anthology--a next wave of NAP? Messerli's anthology includes work by Objectivists, New York School, Language Poetry, Beats, and permutations between. The anthology stood for my "new poetry" education (I was looking for an education to counter the conventional lyric/confessional traditions I had been mostly exposed to in my college education). I photocopied the table of contents and used it as a kind of "shopping list" at bookstores for a few months. Reznikoff is the first poet listed in the anthology--and being a bit of an obsessive compulsive, I was intent on buying a book by Reznikoff. After this was completed, I could move on to the next poet in the anthology (Lorine Niedecker). It didn't quite work out that way, of course, for the entire "shopping" list, but the book was definitely formative in my education as a poet.… (meer)