THE LANGUAGE LETTERS

RECENCIES SERIES: RESEARCH AND RECOVERY IN

T WENT IE TH-CENTURY AMERICAN POE T ICS

Matthew Hofer, Series Editor

RECENCIES
This series stands at the intersection of critical investigation, historical
documentation, and the preservation of cultural heritage. The series exists to illuminate
the innovative poetics achievements of the recent past that remain relevant to the present.
In addition to publishing monographs and edited volumes, it is also a venue for previously
unpublished manuscripts, expanded reprints, and collections of major essays, letters, and
interviews.

Also available in the Recencies Series: Research and Recovery in Twentieth-Century American
Poetics:

Inciting Poetics: Thinking and Writing Poetry edited by Jeanne Heuving and Tyrone Williams
Presences: A Text for Marisol, A Critical Edition by Robert Creeley and Marisol Escobar
Why Should I Write a Poem Now: The Letters of Srinivas Rayaprol and William Carlos
Williams, 1949–1958 edited by Graziano Krätli
Curious Disciplines: Mina Loy and Avant-Garde Artisthood by Sarah Hayden
Robert Duncan and the Pragmatist Sublime by James Maynard
An Open Map: The Correspondence of Robert Duncan and Charles Olson edited by Robert J.
Bertholf and Dale M. Smith
Imagining Persons: Robert Duncan’s Lectures on Charles Olson edited by Robert J. Bertholf
and Dale M. Smith
The Collected Letters of Charles Olson and J. H. Prynne edited by Ryan Dobran
The Olson Codex: Projective Verse and the Problem of Mayan Glyphs by Dennis Tedlock
The Birth of the Imagination: William Carlos Williams on Form by Bruce Holsapple

For additional titles in the Recencies Series, please visit [Link].

 THE LANGUAGE
LETTERS
Selected 1970s Correspondence of
Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, and Ron Silliman

Edited by Matthew Hofer and Michael Golston

University of New Mexico Press  •  Albuquerque

© 2019 by the University of New Mexico Press
All rights reserved. Published 2019
Printed in the United States of America

Names: Hofer, Matthew. editor. | Golston, Michael.

Title: The language letters: selected 1970s correspondence of Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, and
Ron Silliman / edited by Matthew Hofer and Michael Golston.
Description: Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2019. | Series: Recencies | Includes bibli-
ographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019009250 (print) | LCCN 2019011232 (e-book) | ISBN 9780826360663 (e-book) |
ISBN 9780826360656 (printed case: alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: American poetry—20th century—History and criticism. | Language poetry—History
and criticism. | Poetics. | Andrews, Bruce, 1948—Correspondence. | Bernstein, Charles, 1950—Cor-
respondence. | Silliman, Ronald, 1946—Correspondence.
Classification: LCC PS325 (e-book) | LCC PS325.L36 2019 (print) | DDC 811/.5409—dc23
LC record available at [Link]

Cover illustration courtesy of [Link]

Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Note on the Text  xi

Preface: L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Notification Flyer, August 1977  xiii

Introduction.  “More Public”  1

Matthew Hofer

Introduction.  “Correspondence beyond the Letter”  11

Michael Golston

The Language Letters

1. Robert Grenier to Ron Silliman, 12/1/70  21

2. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews, n.d.  24

3. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews, 12/6/71  30

4. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman, 12/10/71  41

5. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews, 12/26/71  50

6. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman, 1/17/72  61

7. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews, 2/3/72  65

8. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews, 2/10/72  68

9. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews, 3/12/72  77

10. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman, 3/21/72  80

v
vi  Contents

11. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews, 3/27/72  89

12. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman, 4/29/72  92

13. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman, n.d.  100

14. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews, 8/17/72  101

15. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman, “1/2X/73”  102

16. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman, 6/7/73  103

17. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews, 6/12/73  104

18. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews, 8/7/73  108

19. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews, 12/1/73  111

20. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman, 12/16/73  112

21. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews, 3/11/74  112

22. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews, 5/2/74  117

23. Steve McCaffery to Bruce Andrews, “fall ’75”  118

24. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews, 9/10/75  120

25. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews, 10/12/75  123

26. Charles Bernstein to Ron Silliman, 1/28/76  125

27. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews, 3/16/76  126

28. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman, 4/23/76  127

29. Ron Silliman to Charles Bernstein, 7/26/76  136

30. Charles Bernstein to Ron Silliman, 8/15/76  139

31. Ron Silliman to Charles Bernstein, 9/3/76  142

32. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman, 9/13/76  143

33. Steve McCaffery to Charles Bernstein, 9/14/76  151

34. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews, 11/6/76  154

35. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman, 11/10/76  159

 Contents  vii

36. Charles Bernstein to Bruce Andrews, 11/15/76  167

37. Steve McCaffery to Bruce Andrews, 11/23/76  170

38. Lyn Hejinian to Charles Bernstein, 12/16/76  174

39. Charles Bernstein to Ron Silliman, 2/14/77  175

40. Ron Silliman to Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews, 2/17/77  186

41. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman, 2/26/77  195

42. Charles Bernstein to Ron Silliman and Bruce Andrews, 3/4/77  208

43. Ron Silliman to Carole Korzeniowsky, 3/8/77  218

44. Ron Silliman to Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews, 3/28/77  224

45. Charles Bernstein to Ron Silliman, 5/19/77  244

46. Charles Bernstein to Steve McCaffery, “early June ’77”  247

47. Charles Bernstein to Ron Silliman, 6/8/77  255

48. Lyn Hejinian to Ron Silliman, 6/16/77  263

49. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman, 7/16/77  265

50. Charles Bernstein to Barrett Watten, 7/17/77  270

51. Bruce Andrews to Lyn Hejinian, 7/29/77  274

52. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman, 8/2/77  277

53. Charles Bernstein to Bruce Andrews, 8/25/77  285

54. Charles Bernstein to Lyn Hejinian, 8/26/77  290

55. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman, 8/29/77  291

56. Ron Silliman to Charles Bernstein, 8/31/77  298

57. Lyn Hejinian to Charles Bernstein, 8/31/77  299

58. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews, 9/4/77  301

59. Bruce Andrews to Lyn Hejinian, 10/9/77  313

60. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman, 10/10/77  315

viii  Contents

61. Ron Silliman to Charles Bernstein, 10/22/77  315

62. Ron Silliman to Charles Bernstein, 10/28/77  317

63. Charles Bernstein to Ron Silliman, 11/1/77  320

64. Charles Bernstein to Jackson Mac Low, 11/13/77  322

65. Lyn Hejinian to Charles Bernstein, 12/9/77  325

66. Ron Silliman to Charles Bernstein, 2/18/78  327

67. p. inman to Charles Bernstein, 6/22/78  337

68. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman, 8/4–5/78  339

69. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews, 2/3/78  342

70. Lapsed Subscription Notification  343

Appendix 1.  Robert Grenier/Bruce Andrews Letters and

“Three Possibilities—for Larry Eigner”  345

Appendix 2.  The Pacifica Interview

Susan Howe with Bruce Andrews and Charles Bernstein  363

Appendix 3.  Contemporary Interview

Michael Golston and Matthew Hofer with Bruce Andrews
and Charles Bernstein  377

Appendix 4.  Mailing Labels for Original ~250 Subscribers  393

Appendix 5.  Language Distributing Service Flyer  403

Glossary of Major Authors of Letters  407

Glossary of Cited Magazines and Journals  411

Index 417
Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge all those who have been involved in conversations

about this project over the past several years, including, especially, Craig Dwor-
kin and Peter Middleton for reviewing the manuscript and providing incisive
and practical suggestions for its improvement. We also wish to single out for
special thanks: Stephanie Spong, who did much of the initial transcription
work; Gian Luigi de Falco, who transcribed the interviews; Jessica Hallock,
Hiie Saumaa, and Veronica Belafi, who all contributed to the glossaries; and
Paul Stephens, who assisted with research on Bob Grenier in Stanford Uni-
versity’s Special Collections. Lynda Claassen and her staff at the Mandeville
Collection at the University of California–San Diego provided crucial support
as well as expert advice. An Elizabeth Wertheim Award from the University of
New Mexico English Department facilitated extended research in the UCSD
Archive for New Poetry as well as travel both to consult Bruce Andrews’s
unsold literary archive and to interview Andrews and Charles Bernstein. A
dean’s subvention grant from the University of New Mexico College of Arts and
Sciences helped support publication of the book, and the University of New
Mexico Press encouraged this work throughout the process. Bruce Andrews,
Charles Bernstein, and Ron Silliman have been unstintingly generous in every
meaningful way.

ix
Note on the Text

Given that there are so many letters to choose among, we decided to include only
those that work through an issue of poetic style or literary history or else refer to
the collaboration that led to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. In an effort to achieve con-
sistency and enhance readability without ceding the authors’ stylistic choices,
we sought to maintain editorial and bibliographic regularity within individual
documents rather than impose a uniform style on these varied compositions.
However, in those few instances when a discrete change of style occurred within
a letter, we endeavored to follow that shift (as in, for example, letters 32, 40, 41,
and 44).

Notes on Format

• We have reproduced the format of the letters as written, within reason.

• All text is left justified and single-spaced except for poems or prose pas-
sages that are clearly structured by meaningful choices.
• Marginalia have been absorbed into the body of the letters, with anno-
tations from the sender noted in the text by [(author initials) inserts:]
(interlinear) or [(author initials) annotates:] (marginal).
• Obvious and semantically inconsequential errors of style and usage are
silently corrected and/or standardized within individual items, including
idiosyncratic issues of orthography.
• All titles have been consistently formatted with quotation marks or
underlining (italics), except where capital letters stand in for italics.
• When names, titles, first-person pronouns, and/or the first words of
sentences were irregularly capitalized within a document, we identified
and adhered to the dominant tendency; the same logic applies to each
contraction.

xi
xii  Note on the Text

• Although we have standardized general and scholarly abbreviations

according to the usage guidelines specified in The Chicago Manual of
Style, we have let consistently applied concatenations and colloquial
abbreviations stand.
• Uncorrected typos in letters composed by Charles Bernstein are, at the
author’s request, followed by corrections in square brackets.
• To avoid any confusion with respect to interpolations, Bruce Andrews’s
square brackets, which are genuinely equivalent to parentheses, have
been converted to parentheses.
• In many instances, the glossary of authors and publications performs the
function of footnotes, though we do offer some annotation to explain
important references that might not be understood easily through con-
ventional searches.
Preface
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Notification Flyer, August 1977

Together with Ron Silliman, we are presently getting

underway a sort of mini language collective -- at start,
to do a xerox distribution service of out-of-print & not-
yet-published work.

As another part, the two of us are beginning

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, a bi-monthly newsletter of information
and commentary (complementing magazines like This, Tot-
tel’s, etc.). In the publication, we will be emphasizing
that spectrum of work that places its attention in some
primary way on language, ways of making meaning that take
neither “form” (syntax, grammar, process & program, shape)
or “content” (vocabulary, information, subject matter),
or their relation, for granted. Focusing on this kind of
poetic activity, and related aesthetic & political con-
cerns, we hope to open things up more publicly beyond cor-
respondence: break down unnecessary self-encapsulation of
writers -- person from person, scene from scene: & develop
more fully the lattice-work of those involved in aestheti-
cally related work.

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E will go out initially to about 200 writ-

ers, hopefully by subscription, and include information
on magazines & books (price & where to locate) and fea-
ture texts (with bibliographic information) on a number of
writers we want to concentrate some attention on (e.g.,

xiii
xiv  Preface

Coolidge, Mac Low, Mayer, McCaffery, Eigner, Palmer,

Lally, Greenwald, DiPalma, Raworth, the Rothenberg anthol-
ogies, plus, plus. . .).

Besides this: a mix of short essays, texts, letters, state-

ments, reader comments, journal excerpts & reviews (espe-
cially of new books, etc., by less well known or younger
writers -- and related non-fiction). Possibility here of
reviews neither expository or evaluative -- that is: where
the actual language work that goes on in the poetry writing
is not set aside in writing which “discusses.”

Would be interested in knowing what you’d want to do a

short piece (text/review) on. Due to our space limita-
tions, we are looking for short, compacted things (200-
600 words). Although we can’t solicit work from you with
a guarantee of publishing it, this is a serious query in
your direction. Hopefully, you might suggest things you’d
want to try dealing with in this setting: giving a slant
on language & reading & formal issues, especially as
they affect, or would be of interest to, people who are
involved with reading/writing work like that suggested by
this letter. Again, non-fiction or related arts, not just
poetry, are more than welcome as topics.

Also, feel free to suggest books or people about which/

whom we may not have thought of that you feel are worth
our considering -- both as writers for us and for us to
write about.

We hope you will be in touch soon with your comments &

ideas.

Best,

Bruce Andrews & Charles Bernstein

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, c/o
Charles Bernstein, 464 Amsterdam, New York, N.Y. 10024
Introduction
“More Public”
MATTHEW HOFER

By the time I encountered language-centered writing and the work of the Lan-
guage poets—so-called Language poets, as Bruce Andrews insists—the main
complaint against them was already a critical commonplace. This familiar
objection is that the fundamentally anti-institutional “movement” had become
institutionalized when the Language poets began to secure tenured positions at
research universities, and their diverse body of writing—which never adequately
cohered, as though that were its purpose or point—was, therefore, corrupted. By
the end of the century, this assessment served as both introduction and, often,
postmortem. As a result, I, like many others, was first interested in the theo-
ries that informed the practice, its precepts rather than its instances, ambitions
rather than achievements. Excitement about work published by Andrews and
Charles Bernstein in the newsletter L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E (1978–81) directed
subsequent attention to innovative demonstration pieces that depended upon
that collective thinking about poetics.1 As a result, when language-centered
writing was taken up in critical conversation, it was usually framed as an aspect

1. L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E is nearly always referred to as a newsletter in the correspon-

dence we include here. For the sake of convenience and historical accuracy, we retain the
designation. Although copies of the newsletter quickly became all but impossible to track
down, access to much of the work in it was possible as a result of the publication of The
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book, edited by Bruce Andrews and Charles Bernstein (Carbon-
dale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984). However, converting the reprinted text into
a standard perfect-bound format—6” × 9” trim size and a “contemporary” font rather than
the folded and stapled sheets of legal-size paper with text composed in slab serif monospace
typeface—affects not only the experience of reading but also, perhaps, how the writing
makes meaning. In 2020, the University of New Mexico Press will bring out a reprint edi-
tion of volumes 1 to 3 of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E newsletter (edited by Matthew Hofer and
Michael Golston).

1
2  Hofer

of the legacy of “experimental” US poetics: neither fully dynamic, as it had been

twenty years earlier, nor yet fully canonized, as it is becoming twenty years later.
It was important to readers within the academy due to its status as the last avant-
garde, by which scholars and teachers meant “most recent” but also, based on
developing technologies and ideas of group formation, somehow “conclusive.”
At the time, and in that context, all this seemed reasonable enough.
So what seems reasonable now? If the history of language-centered writing
has proven particularly difficult to assess, its influence is an even more complex
proposition. The early scholarly essays of the 1980s that aspired to explain the
Language movement to a mainly academic audience tended perhaps inevita-
bly to flatten out particularities in order to develop a useful general outline.
This had several consequences, which included appearing to make the emergent
poststructuralist theorists more central to the new style of language-centered
writing—already misleadingly standardized—than they were for most nascent
Language poets. On this account, the movement appeared to be sui generis
within received accounts of literary history, since its claims to radicalism—aes-
thetic and sometimes political—are based on its differences from extant mod-
els of both writing and reading. The Marginalization of Poetry, Bob Perelman’s
insider account of language-centered writing, attempts to provide that historical
context. In it, Perelman celebrates the sense, fostered by L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E
newsletter, that in the 1970s “breaking open new territory and changing literary
history seemed synonymous,” even if “language writers were often accused of
being a clique, writing for, reviewing, and publishing each other.”2 After observ-
ing that the same can also be said of the poetic mainstream, he remarks that “the
publishing histories of the presses and magazines give evidence of a cohesive
group with porous boundaries.”3 The prehistory of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E as
it is articulated in correspondence sharpens the consequence of this reasonable
claim considerably. A central goal of The Language Letters is to present a history
that takes seriously concerns about group identity (and the possibility of the
coterie or avant-garde), the promotion of “underdeveloped” or “atextual” work,
and the dynamics of the personal letter, recast as public and inclusive.
Recent years have seen a marked increase in reflection by principal
players in the movement. For example, in addressing the distinction of
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E from “modernist avant-garde formations,” Charles
Bernstein does not dispute a degree of “social or aesthetic insularity, or the

2. Bob Perelman, The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 17.
3. Ibid.
 “More Public”  3

promotion of particular styles” within the community, but instead remarks that
“it was neither governing nor defining.”4 Bruce Andrews reflects on this ten-
dency as well, stating forthrightly that “we wanted L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E to
be centrifugal” and, since “groups are centripetal,” “group identity was not the
point.”5 Instead, he posits that “the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E years were a time
of making [a] mobile bandwagon, not of building a fortress or monument.”6
Yet he also warily recognizes that “a more rigid and exclusionary version of
group identity” can appear in retrospect “as critics or editors or teachers try to
link somebody to an already written ‘success story,’ or poets try to get on board
the bandwagon.”7 The issue of group identity and its attendant exclusionary
or insular aspects is a basic problem of literary history, one that the winnow-
ing process of canonization can only exacerbate. After all, critics, editors, and
teachers do revise, but they are hardly alone in proving susceptible to that ten-
dency. It is to some extent an inevitable by-product of any attempt to combine
the complexities of critical thinking with the simplifications of historicizing.
An origin story that derives from the correspondence of the key figures most
directly involved in theorizing what would become L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E
newsletter—Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, and Ron Silliman—is attractive
as a critical model. It is, of course, impossible to reprint the full exchange in a
single volume; there are simply too many letters, some are not currently avail-
able, and others are far more personal than poetic. Even so, such a narrative is at
least comparatively objective (no fresh bias). More importantly, it maintains this
objectivity without mitigating the surprise of discovery that punctuates not only
the intense conversations that developed among like-minded strangers (who,
through them, become lifelong friends and colleagues) but also, and more com-
pellingly, the poetic thinking that informs them. There are things to be learned
here that you would not expect, particularly with respect to previously unknown
influences, ambitions, and intentions.
While direct reflection by the principal players is useful, the letters tell a dif-
ferent story—or perhaps, more accurately, tell the same story differently. That
story begins as follows. L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E newsletter arose not only from

4. Charles Bernstein, “The Expanded Field of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E,” in Pitch of Poetry

(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 54.
5. Bruce Andrews, “L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E,” in The Little Magazine in America: A Con-
temporary History, eds. Ian Morris and Joanne Diaz (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 2015), 110, 111.
6. Ibid., 107.
7. Ibid.
4  Hofer

a lively correspondence but from the sense that this exchange ought to be avail-
able and accessible. After all, the post, in itself, is nothing new: even the fif-
teenth-century Italian condottiero Sigismondo Malatesta had a post bag (it’s one
of the reasons Ezra Pound loved him), and, with the introduction of stamps in
both the British Empire and the United States during the 1840s, most Anglo-
phone writers had affordable and consistent access to one another. However,
while the modern postal system does make possible this intense conversation,
it also effectively ensures that the conversation remains private. Yet privacy was
precisely not a desirable condition for the discussion of the “new thing” poetics,
which is perhaps best defined as an attempt to break away from the constraints
of the New American Poetics of the 1950s and 1960s, particularly with regard
to speech and what “voices” entail for ideas about presence as well as reference.
In the 1970s the overriding concern, as expressed in the letters collected here,
was to bring in a broad range of representatives while making the conversation,
in writing, legitimately public. When Susan Howe interviewed the founders and
editors of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E newsletter for WBAI radio in 1981 (“The Paci-
fica Interview”; see appendix 2), Andrews drew special attention to the public
medium of writing as opposed to “some concocted verse tradition that comes
down to us through academic discourse,” contending that this medium must
not be dominated by “book reviewers in The New York Times” or stewarded
by “conservative English professors.”8 More recently he has added to this list
of pernicious influences the uniformity that tends to be cultivated within local
“school-based or urban scenes.”9 For him, imposition of doctrinaire credentials
or modish credibility (“cred,” in either case, from the Latin credo: “belief ”) has
always risked distorting the idea of “writing as an exploration and a presenta-
tion of the possibilities of language,” which, he aptly notes, poets have discussed
“throughout the century in a number of different traditions,” especially “privately
in correspondence, people’s journal writing, etc.” As a venue for explicitly public
poetic thought, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E newsletter amplified and extended this
(common/communal) tendency by its aim to make “participation” itself

less restrictive -- where it isn’t just a matter of what particular person you
happen to be close friends with or happen to have access to through the
mail that you carry on this wonderful dialogue with, but to get some of that
out in a more public way, to build a sense of community, to some extent, to

8. Susan Howe with Bruce Andrews and Charles Bernstein, “The Pacifica Interview,”
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E supplement 3 (October 1981), n.p. See appendix 2.
9. Andrews, “L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E,” 110.
 “More Public”  5

get some of the issues clarified, to get the information around in a somewhat
easier fashion, and to try to do it ourselves as writers. . . . (this volume, 365)

Soon after the Pacifica interview, in an interview for The Difficulties, Bernstein
elaborated on the origin of the newsletter—which he, Andrews, and Silliman envi-
sioned in 1977 as a then nonexistent “forum for the discussion of the issues we
thought most current in terms of poetry writing.” Here Bernstein reiterated that
the correspondence of the preceding years provided the impulse to

make that kind of exchange, and presumably other kinds we were not privy
to, more public, to share the thinking . . . with as large a group of people as
we could interest, including people who might be more interested in the
“thinking about” than the actual work (or poetry) itself.10

This might, at first, seem close to the distinction academics would make in the
coming years. Bernstein concludes, however, by pointing up the hollowness of
positing this kind of distinction between poetics and poems, asserting that “a
poetics can only be ‘alive’ if its poetry is and indeed I suspect, as Pound has
argued, that the converse of that is equally true.”11
Bernstein’s foundational insight was that a magazine devoted to thought
about living contemporary poetics can no longer be (merely) personal. He
was, as he states, therefore “immediately attracted” to the notion of editing
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E “collectively, just because it wld tend to move the mag-
azine away from a personal expression of what interests me to something that
would include a variety of concerns, perspectives, &c.” (this volume, 208). Sil-
liman shared his enthusiasm for the collective approach as a means to achieve
a scope at once “large” and “broad,” terms meant to substitute for the more
problematic innovative and experimental, embracing the “atextual” as well as
many contexts relevant to language-centered writing. He imagined not a poetics
journal but rather “a journal of thought & action in wch poetry is an integral
concern (tho I’d have no hesitation abt publishing a # in wch no poems, nor
refs to poesy, were contained, if it got at something I wanted to get to . . .)” (this
volume, 187). However, to Silliman’s ambitious assertion that “we either need to
do it (make a mag wch changes the fucking culture) or not,” Bernstein responds

10. Charles Bernstein, “An Interview with Tom Beckett,” in The Difficulties 2 (Fall 1982),
collected in Charles Bernstein, Content’s Dream: Essays 1975–1984 (Los Angeles, CA: Sun
and Moon, 1986), 400.
11. Ibid., 402.
6  Hofer

with a “compatible” yet “distinct” call for “a kind of modesty” (this volume, 208,
210). His ambition—which is not inconsistent—is communitarian, decentered,
and inclusive, born out of the ideals of open correspondence:

I think all of us operate some of the time out of a sense of trying to locate,
or trying to be inside, some central place & often this ends up with defining
ourselves as the center & oftimes it ends up as feeling left out of some center
& defining it as a cohesive thing wch has an inside & trying to get into it or
being resentful that we can’t or being disappointed in it when we arrive there
and find it was no center at all but just another grouping. (this volume, 210)

Bernstein, like Andrews, shared Silliman’s concern for the “atextual” and vari-
ous types of “underdeveloped” writing, and he added several prospective special
topics to the impressive list Silliman and Andrews had already formulated. He
also recommended to his coeditors that

the Rothenberg model is one to keep in mind when venturing into areas
where the work is not by those several dozen people who [we] feel [our-
selves to be] in a similar place with. For instance, although I didn’t fully like
all the poems in part one of Revolution of the Word I never felt that anything
shld not have been there because his specific selections & his context for
them made sense to me & it all read like important work that I wanted to
know abt regardless of whether I personally liked it as much as something
else. (this volume, 213)

From its inception, what made language-centered poetics vital was its resistance
to centers, which it achieves by extending via L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E newsletter
the dynamics of (private) letter writing to a (public) aesthetic and intellectual
forum.
A few features that characterize both the production and exchange of letters
in 1970s America matter for their analysis: letters tend to be long and relatively
slow to write, and often cross in the post. Many begin with an apology for delay
or a reckoning of who is behind in the exchange. Gaps of months are often best
understood in this context. For example, as Andrews wrote to Silliman in March
1972, “pardon the absence (February I got a little carried away being ‘consci-
entious’ . . . but I wasn’t mad or hit by a truck, just sort of preoccupied)” (this
volume, 80). As the letters collected in this volume demonstrate, sometimes an
interruption was less easy to laugh away; yet this is, finally, a fully conventional
aspect of the letter as a genre. Anxiety about hurt feelings, vehicular assault, and
 “More Public”  7

postal duplicity notwithstanding, the most important features of the late-modern

letter derive from the very technologies that facilitate its composition and deliv-
ery. Just as soon as the three-way conversation about the newsletter had begun in
the spring of 1977, Silliman complains: “Letters. Letters are just impossible,” pre-
sciently fantasizing about our digital media landscape, which he imagines as “the
day when we have computer terminals in every home (w/ either printout mech-
anism or terminal screen). Whenever I had an idea, I’d just send it” (this volume,
225). Note, too, that this keeps electronic correspondence close to email, which
is, in some ways, more like than unlike the tradition of letter writing. Silliman
does not dream of texting, say, or social media posts, which are characterized as
proclamation rather than inquiry (that is, a letter expects a response). The theory
of a public supported by social media depends ultimately on speed and ubiquity.
A public called into being and maintained via correspondence is animated by a
sense of useful deliberation, a practical mode of thinking together while remain-
ing apart that—despite its urgency—is nearly impossible to rush.12
Typewriters were predictably important to the Language poets, perhaps most
so to Bernstein, who not infrequently writes metacritically about the process of
writing on a particular typewriter or even with a particular font. It is not trivial
to recognize that the ascendency of this technological development for everyday
use occurred simultaneously to the development of language-based writing. Six
years earlier, when their correspondence began, Silliman made the more practi-
cal case—more practical, that is, than wishing for email—that Andrews needed
a typewriter. As he urges, “if you haven’t got a machine available right now, you
really ought to try & get one” or else find a way to use one at a university “gratis”
(this volume, 31). He offers this unsolicited yet well-warranted advice for good
reason. Although Andrews’s script is remarkably regular and fine, the handwrit-
ten poems that Silliman did not accept for publication in Tottel’s “didnt/dont
seem to be as solidly centered & built as these others” (this volume, 31). This is
because the typewriter fundamentally changes not only how writing is written
but also how it is read. In reply, Andrews explains, “I always write by hand,
never compose on typewriter, so I just sent you those pronto, before typing em.
I do have a machine, tho” (this volume, 42). In thinking through the relation of
“modern man to technology,” Friedrich Kittler quotes Heidegger’s proposition
that “technology is entrenched in our history” as well as Nietzsche’s declaration

12. In discussing with Silliman the prospect of his being the West Coast editor of the
newsletter, Andrews recognizes how his access to Bernstein and the prospect of their easy
conversation could lead to “agreement in a loose gradual fashion that may not be tough
enough” and, therefore, to a lack of rigor or distinctiveness (this volume, 200).
8  Hofer

that “our writing tools are also working on our thoughts.”13 In this focus on the
letter and its means of composition, language-centered writing—and its poetics
venue, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E newsletter—are at once the first fully mechanical
and the last predigital avant-garde.
Beyond the use of the typewriter, there are significant differences to be con-
sidered between the newsletter format of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E and more con-
ventional articles or papers, even those published in Lyn Hejinian and Barrett
Watten’s Poetics Journal (1982–1998). These differences involve issues of audi-
ence, tone, form/structure, and content. Most particularly, the reviews in the
newsletter “were notorious for only quoting, or for chopping up, or for otherwise
refusing to differentiate themselves from, the books under review, declining all
authoritative, critical distance.”14 The goal here was to obviate the distinction
between poetic and critical prose. The result is that “the critical piece that was all
quotation [became] an almost standard form in L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E.”15 To
that end, it is clear that the editors solicited two hundred to six hundred words
for a reason, since contributions to the newsletter operated on the model of the
letter itself rather than that of the standard exegetical or theoretical essay.16 Ron
Silliman’s ecstatic first letter to Carole Korzeniowsky (which Silliman agreed to
excerpt as a review of Korzeniowsky’s Breastwork for the second issue of the
newsletter) and the extended exchange with Robert Grenier in appendix 1 (which
details an unsuccessful attempt to persuade Grenier to recast his key essay on
Larry Eigner for the first issue) indicate some possibilities and limitations inher-
ent to this format. Correspondence with Lyn Hejinian, p. inman, Jackson Mac
Low, and Steve McCaffery further elaborates on both the shape of the project
and the community that it fostered and helped to sustain.
The letters and documents that comprise The Language Letters are primarily
housed in the Bernstein and Silliman collections in the Archive for New Poetry at
the University of California–San Diego. Those texts are, however, supplemented
generously by letters from Andrews’s as-yet unsold archive (and also by select
letters from Robert Grenier’s archive, which is housed in Special Collections at

13. Friedrich A. Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young

and Michael Wutz (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 200. The difference, for
Kittler, between Heidegger and Nietzsche is that the latter “wrote the sentence about the
typewriter on the typewriter,” which, in turn, instigated “the transvaluation of all values with
his philosophically scandalous sentence about media technology” (ibid.).
14. Perelman, The Marginalization of Poetry, 33.
15. Ibid., 42.
16. For more on the possibilities ascribed to the letter form for poetic thinking, see the
editors’ interviews with Andrews and Bernstein (appendix 3).
 “More Public”  9

Stanford University). After consulting all extant correspondence from the for-
mation of This through the complete run of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, we first
identified those letters that directly involved conceptual as well as practical
aspects of a prospective magazine of “new thing” poetics. These letters tell the
story of the magazine itself. In the interests of literary and cultural history, we
then selected a generous sampling of letters that address related issues of poetry/
poetics, community, influence, and so on. Several of these letters are remarkably
long—as are many other intermittently compelling letters that the volume as we
had envisioned it could not accommodate. Significantly varying rates of corre-
spondence, combined with a decision not to reprint letters that are predomi-
nantly either “personal” (between writers who used letters to get acquainted) or
“collaborative” (focused on LEGEND as well as other postal poetry “collabs”),
account for most of the conspicuous gaps in the timeline. Readers who want to
know more about those exchanges or projects will find a wealth of material in
the Archive for New Poetry.17
With the exception of a few critically insignificant (entirely personal) omis-
sions indicated by ellipses in square brackets, every letter transcribed for the
body of this volume is unexpurgated, with any authorial notation, whether mar-
ginal or interlinear, indicated as such. However, when working with primarily
typewritten text that is not only unedited but also unproofed, editorial proce-
dures that aim to clarify the work, while a necessary aspect of producing a crit-
ical edition, are also, at times, arbitrary or uncertain. We have therefore taken
special care to provide all available information with respect to archives and
collections for readers who prefer to read our transcriptions against the original
documents. And wherever a prospective emendation even potentially marred a
point—or spoiled a joke—the original, of course, stands.

17. See also “Steve McCaffery, Charles Bernstein, Ron Silliman Correspondence: May
1976 to December 1977,” Line 5 (1985): 59–89, [Link]
essays/McCaffery-Bernstein-Andrews_76-77-letters-Line_1985.pdf.
Introduction
“Correspondence beyond the Letter”
MICHAEL GOLSTON

I first encountered Language writing in 1979, right before the wars that roiled
the poetry world. I had moved to Berkeley from New Mexico to attend graduate
school, which I quickly found alienating. (I quit after a year.) I preferred to browse
the poetry section of Moe’s Books on Telegraph Avenue, where I discovered a
kind of writing that I hadn’t encountered before—dense, wildly adventurous,
unsentimental, strange. It read like philosophy and linguistics driven at the level
of syntax and line. I could sense the affiliations with the modernist avant-gardes,
but the writing also resonated for me with contemporary visual arts—cold but
playful, “postmodern,” deconstructive. I had the opportunity to hear Charles
Bernstein read on campus, and he knocked me out. He was uproarious, funny,
transgressive, weird, all at once, and I eventually went on to write an MA the-
sis at the University of California–Berkeley called “Bridge of Cites: A Measure
of Bernstein’s Resistance,” which I submitted in the spring of 1986. I came to
Language writing through its poetry and had to wait until publication of The
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book in 1984 before I knew of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E
newsletter.
The letters collected in this volume cover the years from 1970 to 1978, a
period during which a sea change gradually took shape in American poetry and
poetics. They begin by tracing the first inklings of an idea for a poetics news-
letter, conceived by a group of young writers reacting to what they felt to be a
moribund market for the publication of poetry outside of the mainstream and a
general lack of a forum for any rigorous discussion of poetics, especially in light
of recent developments in the other arts, in contemporary literary criticism and
philosophy, and in post–New American writing. They end with the inception of
the newsletter itself, the purpose of which was articulated at the end of this near
decade-long process in the editors’ notification flyer:

11
12  Golston

to open things up more publicly beyond correspondence: break down

unnecessary self-encapsulation of writers -- person from person, scene from
scene: & develop more fully the lattice-work of those involved in aestheti-
cally related work. (this volume, xiii)

Three goals, then: to open up the conversation beyond limited exchanges in private
correspondence; to break down barriers between aesthetically compatible writers
and literary scenes; and to develop a venue for what we would now call profes-
sional networking. That the alternate phrase lattice-work evokes the minimalism
still ascendant in the American art world of the early 1970s is no coincidence.
What follows, then, is a selection from the very correspondence that Bruce
Andrews, Charles Bernstein, and Ron Silliman, along with input from sundry
others, designed the newsletter to move beyond—what Silliman, writing to
Andrews and Bernstein on March 28, 1977, calls the letters’

mulch of thot, wch ya shld see & chew around on yrselfs -- I see ourselves
struggling towards a form in these letters, but (more amazing!) I actually see
One emerging! (this volume, 236)

That emergent Form would become the template for L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, per-
haps the first and only serial publication in American letters explicitly to acknowl-
edge its origins in the post. After all, it was always a newsletter, and its editorial
criteria echoed and retained many of the generic features of the personal letter.
In our interview (appendix 3), Bernstein recalls “a very specific conversation that
Bruce and I had, we noticed that you get letters and that the letters were more
interesting than anything you would see in print,” and on May 19, 1977, he writes
to Silliman of “a bi-monthly newsletter . . . sort of an extension of our correspon-
dences in part & an informal place for the exchange of ideas, letters to the editor,
&c” (this volume, 236). The informality that he mentions is of course a hallmark
of the personal letter, one that sets it off from the more systematic evidence- and
argument-driven logic of the formal essay or article or even conventional letters to
the editor, a fact that Andrews expands upon in the same interview:

The pieces that were originally short little articles in L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E

magazine that looked like they could’ve been expanded from letters—which
some of them were—then turns into this sort of transitional phase of more
academicized, longer essays. There’s more of that in Poetics Journal than we
ever had. If you compare L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine to Poetics Journal,
you can begin to see the effect of academia. They’re networking in academic
ways that we were not—that, and also the lack of academic protocol being
 “Correspondence beyond the Letter”  13

followed in L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E: it’s not an MLA paper, it’s not the publi-
cation guidelines for footnoting, or that shit, you know. (this volume, 383)

To pirate a pithy phrase from Silliman, the “new thing” will not be driven by
“pseudoscientific pathologies such as the goons of the MLA wld have” (this vol-
ume, 66). The intimacy of personal exchange would extend from private letters
into the format of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E newsletter, the experimental likes of
which had never been seen before.
And, to be truthful, not that many people actually saw it: the original sub-
scribers list in 1978 was “several hundred people.”18 But gradually, during the
course of the 1980s and 1990s, what came to be known as Language poetry
achieved the notoriety for which it is famous, and it arguably went on to alter
in fundamental ways the landscape of American writing (cf. Jed Rasula, who
writes in 2004 that “the legacy of language poetry has been disseminated into
the environment at large”).19 The letters begun in 1970 take us into the “mulch”
of thinking that ultimately aimed to mark out this brave new world.
The present volume begins with a letter from Robert Grenier to Ron Sil-
liman, dated December 1, 1970; the two had been corresponding since earlier
that year. Grenier mentions a new magazine that he and Barrett Watten were
starting “called THIS for center of experience not description not confession,”
envisioned as a timely reaction to what would be taken up as a mantra in many
of the letters that follow: the collective sense that there were “no magazines with
vision around at this point . . . not Olson not NY not Creeley then what” (this
volume, 21).20 The “then what” is precisely what the ensuing eight years of letter
exchange would work over: This and Silliman’s Tottel’s, later followed by other

18. As Andrews puts it to Silliman on January 17, 1971, “I’m not sure an audience exists. I
think we need readings & explaining articles & backers more now than anything, as well as
mags, like Tottel’s, only partly devoted to the new thing, so it ‘frames’ it & gives it the kind of
respectability that someone like [Ray] DiPalma can move ahead from” (this volume, 64).
19. “In other words, I assume language poetry as a necessary given of the contemporary
American poetic landscape, but I also assume this givenness in the mode of dissolution and
absorption. Many of the most interesting demonstrations of the insistence of language writ-
ing are no longer to be found exclusively in the work of Silliman’s core group; the lessons
have migrated; the emphasis on the signifier climbed down from the tree and rhizomatically
infused the grassy horizon.” Jed Rasula, Syncopations: The Stress of Innovation in Contempo-
rary American Poetry (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004), 18, 209.
20. This phrase recalls Silliman’s opening lines from Tjanting (1977): “Not this. / What
then?” Craig Dworkin originally proposed the link to Watten and This in these lines (he put
it as “Not THIS. / Watten?”) in a talk called “Mushrooms. Teaching Machines” presented at
the Poetry Division Panel on Poetry and Pedagogy at the annual convention of the Modern
Literature Association on December 28, 2000, in Washington, DC.
14  Golston

small-run journals like Bob Perelman’s Hills, were the slim pickings to be had
at the time.21 And the feeling was that a changing of the guard was imminent;
as Andrews puts it in a letter written to Silliman three weeks later (January 17,
1971), “as for CAT[ERPILLAR] & PARIS REVIEW: their collapse will only send
the rats scurrying. The whole NYC school is one sinking ship & a lot of people
are either going to have to jump on new ones . . . or else get frustrated. Ditto for
the CATS” (this volume, 64).
The feeling that the American poetry scene was a sinking ship overrun by
scurrying rats and CATS, and that a new “matrix” (Andrews’s term) was in the
offing, was widespread among the letter writers featured here.22 Early on Andrews
speaks to Silliman of “quantum jumps,” and by June 7, 1973, he senses that

something has evolved which is gaining more & more a presence . . . & more
& more of our evolutions are bound up by an inter-subjectively shared context
than was true before (say, a year ago or -- especially -- a year & a half ago). We
can both come up w/ a dozen examples of this in the last year, so, right? It’s
TIME, so why wait. Many things pointing in this direction: a gathering, a tak-
ing shape. From the hundreds of pages of work I’ve looked at from the people
we both know of there is something: phoenix. (this volume, 103)

In his reply, Silliman concurs: “Ray [DiPalma] & I & Barry [Watten] &c. all have
the sense I suspect of realizing that Something is going on now wch we all are a
part of, but wch nobody has wholly yet defined” (this volume, 109). The excite-
ment at the prospect of a new poetics thing rising from the ashes of the various
mid-century poetry scenes is palpable; all that was required was a venue. The
outlines of the matrix were slowly coming to the surface.
Grenier’s letter shows some of the initial intellectual and aesthetic vectors
of that matrix, lines that will be added to as the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E proj-
ect develops: notably, the recasting of Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams,
and Louis Zukofsky as the singularities of modernism, replacing canonical fig-
ures like Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens; the centrality of Black

21. See “Some Magazines” in L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E 1 for a comprehensive list of what

was available by 1978, and cf. Andrews in his letter from January 17, 1971: “One Tottel’s keeps
us all inspired even if it doesnt net any influence the way a big mag would. This fills another
side of the gap. . .” (this volume, 64). Vito Acconci and Bernadette Mayer’s 0 TO 9, praised as
a forerunner, stopped publication in 1969.
22. As Andrews puts it, “For a new ‘matrix’ to start up, as 0-9 tried to make one, the old
schools have to be less attractive, or else de-legitimized” (this volume, 47).
 “Correspondence beyond the Letter”  15

Mountain writers at mid-century, pulling away from academic poets like Rob-
ert Lowell, W. H. Auden, and other darlings of the New Criticism; and a new
focus on linguistics and language philosophy, originally in its anthropological
variations (here, the linguistic determinism of Benjamin Lee Whorf and his
magical Hopi verbs). Increasingly, continental structuralist and formalist mod-
els and theorists gained prominence—Roman Jakobson especially—and then
poststructuralist critics like Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, and finally Jacques
Derrida, whom Steve McCaffery introduces to Bernstein in 1976. McCaffery
claims that Derrida “gives a very heavy philosophical defense of what you do
aesthetically here” and goes on to suggest that in

the necessary semiotic absence of the sign . . . lies the fundamental contra-
diction of western language. [W]e’re discovering it and we’re the first to try
to live and write in the knowledge of it. (this volume, 171)

Whether this is true is debatable, and at any rate it would be applicable only on
a case-by-case basis, although Bernstein later will call Derrida “the new French
master” (this volume, 286).23
Familiarity with these thinkers came on gradually, as the Age of Theory
slowly evolved; in the earlier letters, we hear a different range of influences. “New
Thing” jazz musicians; popular singers like Neil Young and Dionne Warwick;
contemporary choreographers and dancers, painters, and sculptors; Holly­wood
movies and experimental filmmakers; playwrights and novelists; and of course
poets, both living and dead, provide a kaleidoscopic view of the cultural world
of the early 1970s.24
Learning curves could be steep. Andrews was a newly minted PhD in politi-
cal science from Harvard, and while he brought historical, political, and socio-
logical literature to the table—he was widely read, for example, in Frankfurt

23. In a letter to Silliman dated June 16, 1977, Lyn Hejinian notes, “I finished the Derrida
book, with a sudden breakthrough to understanding in the last chapter. Some understand-
ing. SPEECH AND PHENOMENA presupposes a familiarity with Husserl which I simply
don’t have” (this volume, 264).
24. Andrews puts it bluntly: “I think the real opportunity for people to get excited about
this kind of poetry writing—leave the essay stuff aside for a second—is their already having
developed a boredom and a lack of interest in what’s already out there, and what’s dominant,
and what’s hegemonic. My sense of that developed out of the jazz world. That was what
modern jazz was all about. It literally made you bored with the previous generation, so that
when you heard Charlie Parker you said, ‘Ah, those Johnny Hodges records, they’re lovely,
but they’re just not where we’re at right now’” (this volume, 388).
16  Golston

School theory—he admits that “Litcrit I know, truly, nothing of ” (this volume,
84). For that matter, neither he nor Bernstein was widely read in poetry, whether
contemporary or canonical. As Andrews put it, “poetry is kind of a avocation
& I dont read much of it (never did) so dont really know what’s happening in
the hinterlands” (this volume, 50); Bernstein reports that “i don’t find ‘straight’
poetry very interesting to read & basically have not read whole realms of wrk”
(this volume, 284). Deriving less from the Grand Tradition of Euro-American
poetry and more from the mixed cultural ferment around them, these poets
both broke with the poetical past and differentiated themselves from the avant-­
gardes who had preceded them. Even Stein, Williams, and Zukofsky referred
to and wrote through figures like Shakespeare, Blake, Breughel, Spinoza, and
others (Stein less than the other two). The Language poets represented here
were scorched-earthers, bent on burning the ships as opposed to going down
to them; the phoenix that would arise from the ashes would be a bird of an alto-
gether different feather.
Silliman, for one, seems to have done his homework. Consider his list of “inter-
esting writers”: “little of Wordsworth beyond The Prelude interests me, but that
holds my attention FIRM, at the Center. . . . Pound, Stein, Williams, Zukofsky,
Creeley, Ashbery, O’Hara, Eigner, Coolidge, Grenier—w/some reservations (e.g.,
the extent to wch Ashbery is a combine of the influences of Roche & Pleynet from
the French & the likes of Chris Smart v. the extent to wch he has done his own
work—almost forgot to mention the influence of Milton!)” (this volume, 113).25
Larry Eigner, Clark Coolidge, and Grenier quickly emerge as the most relevant
living precursors and champions of the new thing. Minimalists, they directed
attention away from what Silliman calls persona-driven “Browning crap” and
toward “a poetry that recognizes language itself as the crucial human experi-
ence & can explore that recognition”—a practice that is referred to for several
cycles of letters as “non-referential formalism” (this volume, 34, 71, 151, 284).26 For

25. In a letter from December 26, 1971, Silliman writes to Andrews, “What you say about
influence interests me—it’s only been in the past 18 months or so that I’ve felt my influences
to be restricted simply to my peers, as it should be, that I’d used up (“ ”) the older folks. The
crux to influence, it seems to me, is being able to turn to X Y & Z w/ the expectation of find-
ing something NEW & being often gratified & then trying these new things on oneself—in a
beginning writer this can be a common occurrence, wch is why it’s important I think to read
almost everything—at least until one knows what is not of much worth, use, interest” (this
volume, 54).
26. In a letter to Silliman from “January 2X, 1973,” Andrews addresses competing denomi-
nations for the new thing: “Thanks for the well-put hesitation about ‘language-centered writ-
ing’—it is too broad, but somehow ‘nonreferential’ is too narrow & ‘word as object’ seems too
cold, ‘word-events’ a little closer, but I’d still like to include (or maybe they already are, hmm)
people who use sentence/syntax/less discreteness/fewer edges. . .” (this volume, 102).
 “Correspondence beyond the Letter”  17

Silliman, Eigner is “the first man to isolate words/phrases/perceptions in such a

way as to force the attention onto them, not to the context” and supersedes even
Stein, who never got so far in “the whole field of minimalist/language structured
work” (this volume, 27). Interesting is the ongoing discussion between Andrews
and Silliman regarding surrealism, or what Andrews terms “fragmented Ameri-
can ethnographic proto-surrealism,” which he claims “has more variety, power &
much more of a startling mysterious disorienting effect” (this volume, 43) than the
“Eigner/Coolidge conglomorate” brand of minimalism. Silliman is suspicious of
startling mysterious disorientations, and so on. The conversations swirl, disagree-
ments swell and subside, lists of potential invited participants are drawn up, and
slowly the One Form materializes.
To read the letters reprinted in the nominally standard format into which we’ve
transcribed them is to miss their thick materiality; the scratch marks, smudges,
and erasures that punctuate them; their multicolored, torn, cramped, crimped,
and punctured surfaces. The letters tend to be rough, gruff, and handled, some-
times composed on scrap paper, cardboard, and postcards. Cut and pasted assem-
blages, they are glued on the backs of posters and xeroxed notices for readings.
Most of Andrews’s missives are densely handwritten and often illustrated, and
many of the letters go on for a dozen or more pages; they are minor epics of the-
oretical speculation, gossip, opinion, harangue, critique, personal news, Homeric
catalogs (the lists of proposed names for the newsletter are amazing), and, increas-
ingly, practical concerns, after the manner of ledgers and accounts, involving the
production and distribution of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E itself.
They are also almost exclusively written by white middle-class straight men.
There is no disputing this aspect of the movement, but it is worth pointing out
that these issues were of some concern to the writers involved. Future news-
letters imagined by the editors included special issues focusing on women,
indigenous peoples, gay male poets, “working class materials,” and third world
peoples, and an issue devoted entirely to Simon Ortiz, a Native American poet
from Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico. Certainly, the ideas for projects in the
future do suggest sensitivity to a range of issues.27
Aside from its general informality, the generic letter form provided other
motivations for the eventual shape and tone of the pieces that found themselves
published in L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. For instance, despite the gargantuan mis-
sives sent by the editors to one another, word count generally hewed to the aver-
age length of the standard letter. Bernstein tells Hejinian,

27. For an insightful discussion of the issue of language-centered poetry and race, see
Timothy Yu, Race and the Avant-Garde: Experimental and Asian American Poetry since 1965
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 38–72.
18  Golston

we want to publish short (200-500 words as a general rule -- longer in the case
of special projects or texts) reviews/texts/responses/comments -- I hesitate to
leave it at “review” because I feel very open about the form -- i.e., not neces-
sarily, or exclusively, expository, descriptive, or evaluative. (this volume, 290)

Again we hear of an openness that goes beyond the MLA goon squad’s sense of
academic proprieties. Silliman points to “how letters of this fashion will work
like chess games, forms of logic, a curious but interesting-to-me dialectic.” Let-
ters can be “irritated” (Andrews), or they can be salubrious (Silliman):

“These letters are tonic” -- Ted Enslin (in another context, but yes, the pt it
takes is well posed, the wealth of ideas in yrs of the 29th are a drug in the
mind-expanding sense of that term) -- reading something of that order
leaves me w/ 100 ideas refracting off each sentence & a lot of thot moves
forward that way, before one scarcely notices it -- i too miss the fact that we
can’t talk all these things out each week, tho often mail improves that sort of
dialog (it depends on the individual). (this volume, 301)

The letter template allows for the peregrinating, expansive, speculative, and free-
wheeling approach that characterizes most of the pieces published in the news-
letter, but letters also made possible highly focused close readings. As Bernstein
puts it, “Seems there’s continually an enormous amount of detail between us in
the letters of late -- wch is a whole different tone than before. So many notes
-- wch is a day-by-day thing, maybe actually the best kind of letter interchange
because least abstract, generalized” (this volume, 322). Solidly grounded in the
serious, adventurous, invested generosity and camaraderie of nearly a decade
of intense correspondence, the pieces published in the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E
newsletter blazed a new path for critical inquiry.
I’ll end with the last lines of a letter written by Andrews to Silliman late in
their long correspondence, dated September 13, 1977:

Midnight now: my evening for you Ron. Thank you for a good talk.

Love,

Bruce

Just read this & it seems so condensed & brief: what was, for me, almost 2
hours of thinking & feeling to you. Odd sense. Reread. (this volume, 150)
The Language Letters
 The Language Letters 21

1. Robert Grenier to Ron Silliman (12/1/70)

Dear Ron,

Here in some confusion with winter coming on friends

and dogs living with us until today I’m home alone doing
something again though large blank spots in my head. Was
getting to be just like tv with my waiting around to see
what was supposed to be done given context of people sit-
ting around pretty much the same, so that writing let-
ter has to be gone at even with nobody now here in fits
and starts. Starting a magazine with Barry Watten, send
something maybe “Annie Mack” & that crosscountry sequence
or whatever, something with a lot of nouns & pronouns,
or whatever, soon, for Jan. 1 deadline; not big deal but
maybe might be as I get to all this lying round in my head
past ten years; called THIS for center of experience not
description not confession; don’t pay but should be good
to read; B. has access to offset in Iowa and grandmother’s
money, we’ll see what we can do; that I feel no magazines
with vision around at this point makes room and possibly
use; not Olson not NY not Creeley then what; I’ll have 30
pages as going thing so send it along.

You and Shelley did seem to be living separately, though

I thought, I’m backward, in my old homebody family which is
often enough trap and false coziness dependency, thought
maybe that’s the way etc. Looking for the right way to live.

I’ve been writing more of this long beach poem so

it’s about done or written out at worst sprawls, it’s
all right but is it all moving and how to get it around
whether as I’ve been thinking best to put it around the
walls of a room to get it seen (not sequenced, not bro-
ken up by page turnings) maybe too literally experience
of words that way. Words morphemes necessary but why
books, try anything, probably get back to books. There is
an awful stasis which you point out, which Irby points
out, which comes from a bunch of single perceptions put
together wrongly or in some sort apparently necessary
22  The Language Letters

sequence or conjunction, don’t know how get around that,

say to people take a long time to read or flash cards as
you suggest maybe? I’ve got an order, thinking maybe to
print them eventually that way but unbound, so any could
be seized itself but possible to go back to order as pages
numbered on back. Like to sit you down with it but bulk
and just one working copy makes that hard. Like to explain
the aesthetic to myself in context of THIS, like what you
wrote about trying actually to “say Stuff” but not just
anything because it happened, no value in accurate ren-
dering but in something envisioned, seen as significant in
that moment of vision matter, not facts not ego but rev-
elation in words finally, some matter some don’t, to give
the feeling of the density of feeling in words as things
referential only as they are but interestingly themselves
tactile experience words. Lots of nouns pronouns words
with nominative function obvious start, Tender Buttons
still most informative learning material, at this point.

Are verbs necessary to action actual experience in

words or are verbs basically descriptive distanced obser-
vation calling what is seen moving “running” “hunched”
“slashing” etc. Why do most verbs seem melodramatic, as
forced feeling, because not ordinarily used in thought &
feeling experience but sentence convention forced on us?
Prose writers vie for more forceful verbs. I don’t seem
to much use them, try to find other parts of speech with
verb function more effectively. Stein “Roast potatoes for”
has for as verb/noun/preposition/conjunction. Many verbs
maybe have to do with guesses as to what may be involved
in energy transference amongst objects hence theoretical
distance, whereas what is felt is more definite. Instead
of Bill smashed John with candlestick rather By Bill heavy
candlestick down into John’s skull etc., with movement
of sentence directly doing the action poorly indicated
by vague concept [RG annotates: maybe summarizing vari-
ous nouns, shorthand] verb; relation of verbs to experi-
ence unclear to me; what are verbs, what are they saying,
whatever context of other words determines (e.g. ball
 The Language Letters 23

dropped down) i.e., just fill words required by conven-

tional sentence structure? Really stumbling around this,
better go read linguists, remember something in Whorf(?)
[RG inserts: no not Whorf it seems] about somebody, Hopi?,
using no verbs, makes enough sense to go look for it, look
it up.

Well to bed. We’ve got puppy and 1 cat, puppy Paw

just now growing into good dog with brown eyes floppy ears
mongrel beagle shepherd labrador something not housebroke
yet but trying pissing in my arms. Bad dog, bad bad dog
etc.

House down by cove in Gloucester town but 5 miles up

around northwest tip of Cape Ann, Lanesville on map, boats
in cove, open sea to north and east, Ipswich Bay to west,
sun sets mostly over water which is odd, but enough of
that. Write, send poems.

Ask Shelley to send me something for THIS or I’m

clumsy, do you see her simply; or tell me where she is &
I’ll write there. I just assume everything is so business-
like. How else. Well fuck me. Put my foot in it and kept
walking. Be all right.

Bob G.

within the family

there are sweet exchanges

STEAM
inside

PAINTINGS
lamb stew
24  The Language Letters

FALL
the leaves
JOY falling
maple out of the
apple
water by the
table

—————

2. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews, n.d.

Dear Bruce

I’m so socked in here with unanswered letters that this’ll

have to be either brief or hurried. I’m glad (very) #6
rung some bells. When I came across a thing of yours in
Gaubi or Guabi (+ the one in Paris Rev), it occurred to
me that we very probably had more in the way of mutual or
tangential concerns than either of us might have thought
at first. I’m glad Bob took stuff for #2; I’ve sent a
handful of people his way & so far, from at least B’s per-
spective, I seem to be batting 1.000. & then he’s turned
me onto a few people himself (Barry Watten, for one, who
I knew years ago in high school days, but had no con-
tact with & had no idea was writing; Jim Preston, a guy
out your way, for another). For several years I found my
own work heading in one way or another into “abstract”
(absurd term) direction (see, for example, some things
from a few years ago in Chicago Rev of this last spring &
in Caterpillar 8/9) & would get to some point where folks
would begin to dump on me -- “what is that stuff s’pose to
mean?” etc. -- &, being younger/less cocksure than I am
now, as often as not I’d back down (or, more accurately,
the whole action of driving in that direction would become
fused in my head/chest with the negative emotion of being
“dumped on” for it). Anyhow, about a year and a half ago,
maybe a little more, less than two, I went through a
sequence of changes -- involving fulltime political work
as a result of the Kent State/Cambodia thing, a short but
 The Language Letters 25

heavy affair, two cross country journeys, an abortion,

breakup of a marriage etc. -- which, for whatever other
effects it had on my head, made it generally impossible to
allow such secondary considerations as external opinions
to control my work & it moved largely towards where I am
now (CROW is more a record of those changes than of what
I’m now doing; some you might like, but quite a bit (it’s
only 33 pp.) is discardable). Whether I would have been
cowed back or not this time is a question I can’t answer,
but by then (fall ’70) I was in touch already w/ Grenier,
beginning at last to have a sense of community in what
I was doing. So things finally began to develop. & when
I dropped out of school (for the 4th school, U of Cal,
Berkeley), rather rapidly. All of this by way of answering
your question, would you like Crow? Much of what you said
in your letter re Hollo etc. would very possibly apply to
it as well. ((one reason tho is that people such as Hollo,
Meyer, Creeley, Kelly etc. /no matter how based their
work may be in speech/talk /have instincts not really far
from the post-Zukofskian center I feel in my work, Bob’s
& Coolidge’s, that language itself is the crucial human
experience: Meyer, for one, living as he is w/ the first
real American minimalist, Jonathan Williams, has a strong
feel for it; or see Hollo’s big book MAYA, esp. the poems
on pp. 62 & 97; Creeley’s had a big effect on Grenier
& [RS annotates: vide his “early” work in Joglars, his
mag,28 or in Coyote’s Journal -- A young Olson, he was!]
Coolidge’s daughter is named after Zukofsky’s wife; so
those relationships really have a certain justification,
even if they’re more “cousins” than “brothers” (it’s also

28. See glossary. The relevance of Joglars, a journal edited by Clark Coolidge and Michael
Palmer, is clarified by Steven Clay and Rodney Phillips in A Secret Location on the Lower
East Side: Adventures in Writing, 1960–1980 (New York: Granary Books, 1998). Here they
recount that “[t]he first push toward Joglars came in the summer of 1963 at Vancouver in
Warren Tallman’s kitchen. Of the journal’s founding, Coolidge writes: ‘Charles Olson was
telling a bunch of young poets how we ought to start a magazine to publish poets’ corre-
spondence, specifically that between Charles and Bob Creeley. [. . .] And now it strikes me
as odd that we didn’t publish Olson in the magazine. Or Creeley. A life of its own’” (237).
26  The Language Letters

a good way to keep oneself/selves from becoming isolated).

I wonder how much of that makes sense?))

Eigner was really I think the first man to isolate words/

phrases/perceptions in such a way as to force the atten-
tion onto them, not to the context -- you won’t find it,
for example, in Pound (not even anywhere as clearly in
Zukofsky either) & the only other precedents that I’ve
ever found even suggesting this are some of Arthur Kreym-
borg’s stuff in the ’20s (tho only a very little); I’ve
never figured why, for all her work in this direction/tra-
jectory, Stein never actually got to that point, (or, in a
similar vein, Oppen’s book Discrete Series, published in
’34, could have gone that way, but didn’t -- how come?).
There was a woman by the name of Joyce Hopkins, who pub-
lished a one line poem (!) in the February 1931 issue of
Poetry (the one now known as the “objectivist” number) who
comes soooo close, but as far as I can discover never pub-
lished again.29

The result is that it was Eigner, by circumstances of

cerebral palsy, who did what 40 years of verse worked for,
but could not get at/to. Yes, he does have a lot in com-
mon with your work, with the work of anyone who focuses
as do you, Bob & all, at the level of the word. (Not sur-
prisingly both Grenier & Gitin have done a lot of work for
Eigner, typing his mss. sending them etc.) Partly it’s
that his own environment has been so limited to a hand-
ful of rooms etc. (he lives 10 miles from the ocean wch he
sees maybe once every few years) that there is almost no

29. Joyce Hopkins, “University: Old-Time,” Poetry 37.5 (February 1931): 251. Joyce Hop-
kins was a pseudonym for Louis Zukofsky, as Zukofsky reveals to Ezra Pound in a letter
of December 14, 1931, which also elaborates on the meaning of the poem. Pound’s reply—
which accuses Zukofsky of “Xcessive complicity or trascombobilation [sic],” since he could
have “expressed the same subject matter in a more simple and lucid manner without losing
one jot of the meaning”—is also illuminating in this context. See Pound/Zukofsky: Selected
Letters of Ezra Pound and Louis Zukofsky, ed. Barry Ahearn (New York: New Directions,
1987), 120–21, 124, 125.
 The Language Letters 27

separation between his vocabulary & it; & then the forced
attention of the fact that it is for him “hard” to write.
You really ought to dig into his things.

So much for sharing my enthusiasms. I do tho take Eigner

every bit as centrally/seriously as I do Zuk or Duncan or
Olson.

One person working in the whole field of minimalist/

language structured work is Jim Preston: who lives close
to you at 167 College Ave in Somerville (see his stuff
in This #1) 3 doors up the street from Ken Irby (who got
Bob G’s old job at Tufts when Bob went north to Franco-
nia). He seems still to be more forming than formed in
his work, but perfectly serious & much of what he does is
solid enough.

Did I mention the existence of Dave Morice’s GUM (Box 585

Iowa Cy 52240) -- heavy New Yawk influence, but they have
published Coolidge, Grenier, wrote & asked me for some
. . . their page size is such that they’re by format aimed
at the miniature form: about 2 inches square.

Coolidge’s address is Box 224/ New Lebanon NY/12125. I

don’t really know him especially well, he has something
of a reputation for being a “loner,” a reticent man; one
thing from the couple of letters that have passed between
us tho is that he has an evident seriousness that is a
fortunate exception (from my perspective) to the whole NYC
crowd.

If you haven’t picked up on the work of the British poet

Ian Hamilton Finlay (any book/pamphlet or/broadside except
The Dancers Inherit the Party), you’ll be pleasantly sur-
prised . . . but his stuff is usually hard as shit to
track down & often comes in 1 page for $2.50 quantities.
See the 23 Modern British Poets (Swallow & TriQuarterly,
or in an English edition by Fulcrum). Also, if you missed
it when it came out, Rothenberg’s translations of Eugen
28  The Language Letters

Gomringer (entitled GOMRINGER BY ROTHENBERG: THE BOOK OF

HOURS AND CONSTELLATIONS). Both Finlay & Gomringer are
“concretists” who are more closely tied/tuned into lan-
guage as compared to visual forms.

I can’t really think of many others -- all of whom would

be peripheral (David Melnick’s work, for example, or Frank
Samperi’s early books). This whole thing is still so wide
open -- a book as sophisticated as SPACE is still just a
scratch. There’s a guy in Minnesota name of Hunt who may or
may not do things -- a guy named Rich Tagett in SF like-
wise (unless gay lib wholly uses up his sense of energy &
commitment). Grenier was just getting into his thing when
he taught at Iowa, some years back, but between him & Ted
Berrigan 2 years ago & Hollo, there’s been a lot of inter-
est generally in it; several people trying things (Watten,
Morice, Ira Steingroot, Kathy Friedman). Who knows?

As to TOTTEL’S, I’d be quite happy to get more of

your work tomorrow, if possible. #8 will be the first
even-numbered animal that doesn’t contain some of the old
Alpha Sort materials (a mag I tried to get off the ground
in ’68 while at SF State). It already, unless my memory is
failing me, has one thing of yours -- could easily handle
others; it’ll “focus” around Coolidge & Eigner (10 poems
combined). If I can keep the thrust as tight as it is
now, I’d be glad to double its size even beyond #6’s (tho
financially that is a real pain). The odd #’d ones are
“taken” thru #11, wch could be as long as a year. I want
to hold off on even planning any more until at least #9 is
out (Tom Meyer #); but you certainly are one of the hand-
ful of people I’ve been thinking of (Preston, Watten, John
Taggart, Myself (?), Melnick are more or less the others).
There’s going to be some kind of pause either between 6 &
7 or 7 & 8 as I’m about to have my tail shipped off some-
place to report for 2 years of “alternative” service . . .
Cleveland seems a likely spot, alongside the gorgeous
green slime of Lake Erie. Anything sent to this address
tho will get to me.
 The Language Letters 29

So why don’t you do this -- send me what you think is

best anyway. If we hold off until at hypothetical #13 or
15 (which for any sort of little mag is real optimism,
I’d say), what you have now would be “old” work by the
time #15 rolled around. If you send now, then I can prob-
ably work things into #8 still & definitely into #10.
That’s not a promise to use everything, but, from what
I’ve seen here & elsewhere, I’d be surprised if I didn’t
use a lot.

&, of course, as Tottel’s ain’t a “public”ation -- no

copyright & only mail distribution -- reprinting is not a
hassle at all . . . tho if you reprint in Caterpillar or
This or Stony Brook (or whatever it will be called if &
when Quasha raises another 7 grand) it will just be redun-
dant.

The Gitin # will be a curious one -- he has lots of talent &

lots of very conflicting influences...he was a student both
of Olson’s & Creeley’s & a good friend variously of Wieners
McClure Eigner Oppen...these all have yet to be resolved &
the tension in the poems is a very strange literary dialec-
tic or fugue. The Meyer # will be 14 poems, none more than 6
lines long, wch is his latest work (the ones so far in Tot-
tel’s have been those dating as far back as ’68). Faust’s #
will be much more conservative/conventional: he’s an older
poet who’s been ignored -- mostly [due] to his own refusal
to submit to places -- too long.

As to the chain letter wch you mention but did not include
-- the reason Gitin sent you a peso was because I sent
a copy of the letter to Gitin (reaching me via the Lou-
rie brothers, Richard & Iven). I’ve made back the money
it cost to do up 20 copies & mail & send a dollar to some
Michael Lally (whomever dat be); can’t say I’ve made more
than that yet, tho.

Oh well, so much for brevity (the typing is going downhill

because the sun is coming up over it -- good morning).
30  The Language Letters

don’t wait to write back

& send “stuff”

Ron

(“stuff” incidentally
was original title of
“crow” until we noticed 2 books with that title, so
changed it just before Hughes’ came out . . . aii!)

a Rome cerulean reap heater weighword sand wedges

Sydney
ducks automo lee wood

on the docks

————

3. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews (12/6/71)

Oak Land

Dear Bruce,

It would take me a month at least (well-spent) to cover

all your points thoroughly, both in your letter & the ms.
I’ve got a couple of hours before work, having taken the
whole morning off in order to go thru some rituals rites &
routines in the divorce courts, & no envelopes to threaten
or coax me into sending this off right away . . . so maybe
it’s a start. I would have answered sooner, getting your
packet 3-4 days ago, but I had a weird headcold which was
like a cotton ball on my consciousness & I didn’t trust my
sense of judgement/reality. So: I’m taking & will use in
#8 two additional pieces (additional to the one already
there): NITRIC LATERAL PRAYER and the “flying” poem. That
will certainly send #8 bulgin’ to the gills (or whatever
 The Language Letters 31

it does bulge at). #10 we can worry (?) about later; like
when #8 itself is out, or however. My principal reason for
returning those I am returning is that they didn’t/don’t
seem to be as solidly centered & built as these others. In
the case of the holograph mss. tho, it is possible (& no
matter how I try, I can’t say w/out some level of doubt
somewhere) that this response on my part is a reaction
to the fact of it being printed & not typed. Impossible
for me to get a sense (or nearly so) of the relationships
involved. If you haven’t got a machine available right
now, you really ought to try & get one; or else, most
schools of middlin’ size have some typewriters, usually in
the library or some similar place, for use gratis. Both
Berkeley & SF State do, I know.

I’m returning those in the envelope you sent (4th class) &
enclosing a copy of CROW along with them. With Xmas mail,
it may take a week or two to get to you.

The two pieces I’m keeping are superb. The vocabulary in

NITRIC manages to give a web of cohesion in the form that
is, as I see it, precisely the risk that form runs. Are
you familiar with Schwerner’s “Constellations” (not Gom-
ringer’s work by the same name)? A good example of the
same risk with a cop-out resolution (use of quotations to
provide thread or continuity). Schwerner’s always had the
right impulses but lacked the guts to just let go. His
Tablets work into the same areas but are couched (& almost
submerged) in this context of a “scholar-translator” an
ironic dramatic persona. (So naturally it’s the persona,
not the real work, that becomes the focus for praise from
the pudgy-minded crowd -- as tho we weren’t a little tired
with all that Browning crap). Here’s where your comment
that Coolidge “gives the LEFT” is right on target.

The “flying” poem is probably tighter work, for whatever

value tightness is. Also the more “conventional” of the 2;
that is, I can think of pieces by Coolidge (woodpecker) &
by Rothenberg (further sightings) which at least imply the
32  The Language Letters

major structural elements here. Principal differences seem

to be that you don’t rely on a previous literary conven-
tion (surrealism) as does JR, nor obliterating the words
per se by sound-as-incantation a la CC. The use of the
numbers (countering not asserting the linearity) works.

By the time #8 is printed I expect that I’ll have more

thorough responses (specific word responses etc.), but
these will give you a good preliminary sense of things, no?

I’ll try to track Field 3 down. Its distribution out on

this coast is spotty at best & none of the libraries carry
it.

You’re right that all this (whatever this is) is “at the
experimental fringe” of the Caterpillar & Paris Rev areas.
Altho the fact of it disturbs me. The dichotomy itself
is silly, but real because imposed not only externally
(like the Allen anthology) but by internal elitists: Esh-
leman & Padgett & Shapiro are the best examples. There
have been occasional mags that did handle things more
sanely (Acconci’s 0 to 9 which had all manner of folk
from Bernadette Mayer, a co-editor, Rothenberg, Coolidge,
Giorno. . . . Every # of Saroyan’s Lines began I believe
with a quote from Zukofsky) but nothing to sustain things
clearly, not those two or even the older Kulchur & Locus
Solus. Thus vague tendencies become hard & that’s where
the idea of fringe comes in, has weight. It’s a sad thing
really. That’s where the idea of “experimentalism” comes
in & it’s a sticky one. That is, it’s an easy & vague
label used (far as I can tell) only descriptively, lacking
content really. Meaning everything from “new” to “frivo-
lous.” I use it too easily, or have found myself doing so,
am trying to break myself of the habit. It is too easy to
say X is doing some fine experimental things without ever
having to come to grips with what those things are. An
example: Stein. As WCW pointed out there is almost noth-
ing, not even in Tender Buttons, that cannot be found in
Laurence Sterne. Quite so, tho it does miss the crucial
 The Language Letters 33

points -- i.e., where she & Sterne differ -- much of what

is only implicit in his work is central & out front in
hers (both see writing as a process instantly becoming
artifact, which point he uses to propel Shandy’s psycho-
logical obsessions & which she uses as a starting point
of an analysis of writing per se). Robert Bartlett Haas
has a book coming out next month, A Primer for the Grad-
ual Understanding of Gertrude Stein, that, unless I miss
my guess will try to make a big deal of the fact that she
grew up with Isadora Duncan a near neighbor & not far
from the photographer Muybridge, both of whose careers
were focused around studies of movement-as-such & that
Haas will try to show that her prose, esp. in The Mak-
ing of Americans, does likewise (in fact, I think this is
what the word “gradual” in the title is supposed to sig-
nify) all of which ignores, misses the fact of Sterne. A
fact she does not ignore. But, anyway, how in this con-
text to call her an experimentalist? Time magazine called
her that as a means of categorizing her as a “weirdo.” But
she never used experiments as such. Her work was grounded
in an analysis of writing, solidly (more so in prose than
in poetry); I doubt she ever wrote anything slam-bang
-- no matter how whimsical the result might appear. Like-
wise Coolidge, experimental does not equate with “sans
significant form” (Duncan’s test of a work), tho it is
often the excuse of readers for their not bothering to dig
around & see it. . . . Consider how easily people like
Emmett Williams & other “concretists” have been isolated
by just such an attitude. As clearly as I can state it,
what I want is a poetry that recognizes language itself
as the crucial human experience & can explore that rec-
ognition. If, as it appears, this involves changing some
heads, knocking preconceptions down, alright. It is true
that like everybody else I’m tied to my time-culture-space
& that a trajectory that is (I hope) forward & outward
is a part of my personality. But it is that recognition,
not the trajectory that I’m interested in. What you, I,
Grenier, Coolidge etc. are doing is experimental only so
long as we are unclear exactly as to what it is. Nobody
34  The Language Letters

consider[s] projectivism experimental, even dada implies a

clear and specified methodological stance.

Bob’s essay “On Speech” is worth looking at in this light

-- it’s the key, if read carefully, not only to the mag,
but to his work as well. But it’s written assbackwards;
negatively stating the case. The whole paranoia (one of
Bob’s favorite states of mind) of the Scene causes him to
attack what he takes as the major barrier -- major because
it has the most of value in it -- to seeing clearly to his
way of thinking. Which, I’d agree, is the projectivist
line. But it’s destructive, makes everybody just defen-
sive, to simply ram one’s head against the wall like that.
& the first half is, to that extent, poor expended energy.

The key words (for Bob) are: where are the words most
themselves? . . . how may they best be spread abroad with-
out distortion, so that the known world can be shared?

That “explains” Tottel’s #5 perfectly. It also very

clearly shows the differences between Bob & anyone else,
Coolidge or me or whoever. Saroyan’s “novel” Cloth (Big
Table Books) is a good comparison, if only because beyond
the surface similarities there is such a world of differ-
ence: S’s whole book is an examination not of words but of
connections!

The title of This, incidentally, is precisely what it

means:

this

a word referring to nothing else. Bob’s description of

what all this is (i.e., him Coolidge me et al.) is nonref-
erential formalism, which is, I think, critically accurate
but not exactly what I’d call a catchy phrase.

A relevant aside (something the word “connections” above

reminded me of):
 The Language Letters 35

In classical speech, connections lead the word

on, and at once carry it towards a meaning which
is an ever-deferred project; in modern poetry,
connections are only an extension of the word,
it is the Word which is “the dwelling place,” it
is rooted like a fons et origo in the prosody of
functions, which are perceived but unreal. Here,
connections only fascinate, and it is the Word
which gratifies and fulfills like the sudden
revelation of a truth. To say that this truth is
of a poetic order is merely to say that the Word
in poetry can never be untrue, because it is a
whole; it shines with an infinite freedom and
prepares to radiate towards innumerable uncertain
and possible connections. Fixed connections being
abolished, the word is left only with a vertical
project, it is like a monolith, or a pillar which
plunges into a totality of meanings, reflexes and
recollections; it is a sign which stands. The
poetic word is here an act without immediate past,
without environment, and which holds forth only the
dense shadow of reflexes from all sources which are
associated with it. Thus under each Word in modern
poetry there lies a sort of existential geology,
in which is gathered the total content of the
Name, instead of a chosen content as in classical
prose and poetry. The Word is no longer guided in
advance by the general intention of a socialized
discourse; the consumer of poetry, deprived of the
guide of selective connections, encounters the Word
frontally, and receives it as an absolute quantity,
accompanied by all its possible associations.
The Word, here, is encyclopedic, it contains
simultaneously all the acceptations from which
a relational discourse might have required it
to choose. It therefore achieves a state which
is possible only in the dictionary or in poetry
-- places where the noun can live without its
article -- and is reduced to a sort of zero degree,
36  The Language Letters

pregnant with all past and future specifications.

The word here has a generic form; it is a
category. Each poetic word is thus an unexpected
object, a Pandora’s box from which fly out all
the potentialities of language; it is therefore
produced and consumed with a peculiar curiosity,
a kind of sacred relish. This Hunger of the Word,
common to the whole of modern poetry, makes poetic
speech terrible and inhuman. It initiates a
discourse full of gaps and full of lights, filled
with absences and overnourishing signs, without
foresight or stability of intention, and thereby
so opposed to the social functions of language
that merely to have recourse to a discontinuous
speech is to open the door to all that stands above
Nature.

Roland Barthes
“Is there any Poetic Writing?”
in WRITING DEGREE ZERO (Beacon books)
pp. 47-9

That was written in the 1940s!! He is describing, of

course, the French poetry scene (Char at that point was
the key figure) & our verse has developed on very differ-
ent grounds -- a result of both language differences and
history. But, given some leeway for the figurativeness of
his language (this is a translation), such as the concrete
linguistic jargon of “paradigmatic axis” for “vertical
project” & there’s a mine of provocative thoughts.

Likewise Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (esp.

#s 371, 2, 3).

I’m glad (in a funny sort of way) to know I’m not the only
person who’s gotten that crap from Eshleman. I do think
that he does have genuine talent & has on occasion writ-
ten well, tho in spite of himself. He & I have known one
another for several years, agreed about nothing (& have
 The Language Letters 37

variously given each other hell for it). At one point he

used to send me little letters letting me know how Tot-
tel’s was doing -- like a report card! He has, needless to
say, been less than overjoyed as of late. (He tried to fit
Grenier into his own Reichian scheme of things -- absurd
thing in the first place -- came to the conclusion that
Grenier did not have “much to say”!)

I hope, by the way, you get a good response out of Bob.

He’s erratic as all hell with letters & the like (often
has to get high to write them). Tho he’s a voluminous
author -- carries those little 50¢ brown ringed binders
(6x6 or so) & fills them within a week. According to Wat-
ten [. . .], he has about 5 books worth of unpublished
stuff (i.e., 5 books the size of Coolidge’s SPACE). That
was last spring.

What you say of Olson, Duncan & Zukofsky causes, for me,
hesitations. You’re right that Olson’s erratic -- tho,
for me again, that quality seems most essential for his
value. As to Zukofsky lacking “flash” I’m not sure what
such lack implies. He’s long been capable of some incred-
ible things (“Poem Beginning ‘The’” was published in the
Columbia Review before he got his MA -- & he got his MA at
20!). His use of phonetic equivalents is certainly essen-
tial to any extension of verse into non-referential types
of writing. His Marxism, muddy & Stalinist tho it may be,
is appealing (tho not winning). His humor is just weird.
“A” is a fine thing, tho clearly tied into its own time
(i.e., the time it was begun & the whole modernist tra-
dition of the long poem). His short poems likewise, tho
less so. My favorite line of his, unfortunately, is one
that he revised out of “A-2” “Zoo-zoo-caw-caw-of-the-sky”
(as published in the objectivist anthology, 1932, pub-
lished in France by Robert McAlmon & George Oppen). It is
of course his name! ((It was because of Zukofsky that I
first got to know Grenier -- I was studying at Berkeley &
Bob was “visiting poet” along with Levertov; I wanted to
do some research into LZ, couldn’t even find a professor
38  The Language Letters

who’d read him! outside of those two & I knew I didn’t

want Denise; all I knew of BG at the time was that he’d
once been a student of Lowell’s, so I was, to say the
least, wary -- happily, things turned out different -- the
course, by the way, was never really done, compliments
of the Cambodia invasion)). & Duncan, well, Duncan’s a
genius & in spite of all the indulgences & weird little
trips he’s on, his poetry is always the height of concern
for the word (he was, did you know, one of the first loud
backers of Saroyan, as well as Mac Low & several others).
His criticism is hell to read but full of like jewels.
It took me 3 readings of ROOTS & BRANCHES (not his best
book) to finally get into him, to break down my own biases
against all of that “rosacrucian jazz” but the effort is
well worth it. I don’t think he’s “useful” in the way some
others might be (outside his criticism), but he’s really
on par with anybody I’d care to name. You ought to give
him a chance (read perhaps his books WRITING WRITING or
STEIN IMITATIONS from the early ’50s).

I know who Andrea Wyatt is, tho I can’t say I know her.
She’s periodically into the local scene with a vengeance:
posters in the window, readings in the local bookstores,
etc. & I’ve heard a few words as to what Eigner’s par-
ents (who are bout 170 years old combined) thought of her
-- but that’s about it. Her poems seem like lots of other
post-beat post-projectivist things, the craft is adequate
but there’s nothing other than the “quality of the emo-
tion” or some other equally silly idea to value therein.

Yes, I have read ROSE DEMONICS (having once been a sub-

scriber to Poetry & having read, I guess, every # since at
least 1960). I also remember, I think, reading something
about or divided into “agons” tho maybe I’m confused there.
It did stick well enough in my memory for me to remember
that it was intriguing -- I’ll go look it up again mañana
or so. If I remember right, maybe I don’t, but if I do it
seemed both very attractive & very fragile (oh now there
are some subjective descriptions for you! christ).
 The Language Letters 39

Lally -- by your recommendation I’d wager -- had some

things here in the mail the same day as you did -- I took
one, but only one. His poems seemed much less well-crafted
& more conventional -- the sort of thing that DiPalma
pretty much has in his first book, or that Bob did.
(DiPalma’s first book was by the same people who did mine
& who are doing Melnick’s & McAleavey’s -- a reference
that will become clear with the next Tottel’s -- they are
also doing one by your pal & mine -- America’s favorite --
mistah Kuzma! Of whom you spoke so highly & as to which I
so completely agree.)

As to SPACE not having enough variety (hmm?) (=experimen-

talism??), what I said about experimentalism as a concept
back on p. 2 still holds. ING, a book that Lewis Warsh put
out not long before SPACE, which included about half of
the latter & which, insofar as none of Harper’s ads men-
tioned it, I assume was not exactly, shall we say, called
to their attention when they were considering the book, is
a book with much more variety & much weaker. SPACE was I
believe a specific assertion (narrowing the point to make
it sharper). As a contained whole I think it’s marvelous
-- but, as I said, it’s not, by a longshot, the whole of
the story. I wish it had had more response than it has --
I’ve gone out of my way & gotten a handful of people to
read it, but a handful is still just that.

What I said of Lally is possibly a factor of his not hav-

ing a chance to see Tottel’s in advance (?) -- that can
happen I guess all too easily. I know whenever I submit
anything (almost never) I spend a good deal of time psych-
ing editorial preferences out, etc. I did see Kostelan-
etz’s thing -- it was ok, but lukewarmish . . . for one
thing I have trouble sustaining enthusiasm for prose or
prose-like work in any form & I think K goes for the cute
over the meaningful most everytime. His articles on art
(w/ the exception of one or two; one especially that was
suppressed by a lot of big mags, that finally got into
the quasi-underground press as to how big mags control
40  The Language Letters

literary opinion & that whole load of shit) are uniformly

uninformed. A bad man to have on one’s side (alas). These
kids w/ famous names -- Gerber, Grossinger & Kostelanetz
are a real hassle; not only do & can they buy their way
“in” but they end up leaving a whole stigma that somebody
like Saroyan ends up stuck with. What a drag.

As to all those people I mentioned: Watten ought to have

a small book out soon [. . .] & Morice has one presum-
ably just out called TILT, both from little Iowa presses.
Taggett, co-editor of MANROOT, did a feature on himself
in #4, 40 or so poems, but they’re really his first 40,
more signs of possibility w/ occasional successes. Hunt’s
been in the Minnesota Rev, Prairie Schooner etc., is way
off isolated in Bly country & half-in half-out of touch;
a heavy Gomringer influence, which is good -- but unless
he gets himself out into the world, or some other part,
he may end up being another “local poet” midwest style &
I’ve met too many of those already. The others I’ve read
in mags only.

If anything “holds” eight up, it’s not $ (not this month

anyway) but the whole draft scene -- that can’t be worked
around easily, & I don’t want to weaken 8 by rushing. If
you’ve just got $ lying about, either buy a typewriter!
or start a magazine (?). It cost exactly $4 to get #1 of
Tottel’s out (5 pp., 25 copies, including Rothenberg’s
“Praises of the Bantu Kings” on p. 1!). Even #6 was under
$30. Thanks, anyway, for the offer.

I’m pooped. It’s still the 6th of December, tho not for
long. It’s windy, but dry out (in the 40s -- it never gets
below 30 here & only gets to that one night a year maybe).
I hope some of all this is useful -- whatever I mean by
that -- to you. I hope also that the pace (or what seems
like one) of this doesn’t slacken -- the communications
that is. Ok. I’m going to bed. Hope you like CROW. Hope
you keep the poems coming as strong as these. Hope that
most of all.
 The Language Letters 41

By the way, what manner of person are you? (Demographic

variables, etc.) Huh?

all best,

Ron

Io

dized clarity
days inhabitants

these
as
song

(Been working mostly on this longer thing, DO WE KNOW ELLA

CHEESE?, a poem sans content -- tho deliberate hints of
one -- extracted from Zukofskian ((phonetic rather than
semantic equivalents)) translation . . . it’s a bugger --
a language that doesn’t sound like one . . . it may yet
come around -- Ron)

————

4. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman (12/10/71)

Ron --

!! your 17 volume letter arrived -- nuggeted w/ serious-

ness & enthusiasm which at this stage begin to be cor-
related). Huzzah. Since it’s in front of me (the glass
cover to the light on our bedroom ceiling just fell
down), i’ll just follow along this river-letter of yours
& answer as the little thoughts pop out de skull. (Now i
spill beer all over myself! -- not exactly my day -- we
went to see Cocteau’s Orpheus & it wasnt on until tomor-
row, etc.).
42  The Language Letters

Of course -- great about you’re using Nitric Lateral

Prayer & “flying.” I’ll send more when you want for #10
& if you’re using all that much of me (you still had one
other saved over from before), Eigner & Coolidge -- great
company. By “holograph” you mean handwritten (i just
looked it up) -- i always write by hand, never compose on
typewriter, so i just sent you those pronto, before typ-
ing em. I do have a machine, tho. Also thanks for sending
along Crow.

I dont know Schwerner’s work, except the tablets in Tech-

nicians & yr point on its drawing attention to persona
rather than to word/object is right on target. Coolidge
(and Acconci) put their products on the line so much more
by leaving themselves out so much. Nitric Lateral Prayer i
did in Sept. sitting on my mattress as the movers took all
our stuff & loaded it on the van, then Lally did an Ezra
Pound criticism on it, condense condense. It felt at the
time like a turning point but it seems pretty close, now,
to some other things of mine -- ethnographic & fragmen-
tation & some effect like surrealism but w/out using its
devices (this is something i try often to achieve -- espe-
cially lately, as in the collabs w/ Lally, which is pretty
much all i’ve had time for -- Grenier, in Oct., said he
thought i had some confusion betw. “narrative intention”
or “work still based on unexpected extension of conven-
tional representational ground-base” -- and involvement
w/ words themselves, “word object involvement.” I take
this as a good summary. Sometimes i do one (as in Nitric
Lateral Prayer), sometimes the other (as in the handlet-
tered ones), sometimes a mix. Grenier seems to aim at
the latter, as does Coolidge -- this pole i’d define as
“experimental” (as you rightly say, whatever that means),
the other as surrealism: creating startling effects, yet
through words themselves & very fragmented w/out rely-
ing on traditional surreal ways (as Knott, etc., do) --
so somehow i’m trying to create an “American surrealism”
which is more fragmented, less conceptual (i.e., more word
& less idea oriented), & also ethnographic in content
 The Language Letters 43

-- so that’s it: people like Elliott Coleman, Coolidge,

Merton’s Geography of Lograire & Ashbery’s Tennis Court
Oath for the fragmented syntax & the springing words loose
(especially Coleman), also Rothenberg -- then, surreal-
ism for the end result of startling disorientation and raw
power (Aimé Césaire mostly and Merwin’s Lice), but dis-
pensing with the long lines & French devices (because of
the acceptance of fragmentation) -- then Coolidge in par-
ticular for starkest word play -- and finally a different
content of it, stemming from Technicians of the Sacred &
Americana, folklore, etc. (& occasionally, as in the col-
labs w/ Lally, some jive jazz & Ishmael Reed). Now this
is what i’d like to do & have come closest to in Nitric
Lateral & the collabs (which i’ll send you for #10). This
also gives you the authors that’ve been most influential
in my work. In fact, shit, this lays it out nicer than i’d
before, so maybe i’ll just jot this down for meself! Also,
by the refusal, except at times, to jump completely into a
word/object play à la Coolidge-Grenier-some of yr stuff is
due to a grounded hesitance -- i’ve done loads of these,
but -- while i appreciate their forthrightness & avant-
garde quality (because they do dispense w/ “conventional
representational ground-base”), they dont excite me as
much as the other type (fragmented American ethnographic
proto-surrealism), because the latter has more variety,
power & much more of a startling mysterious disorienting
effect.

Which is why no matter how much i enjoy seeing Coolidge’s

stuff around (or Saroyan, Grenier) they dont thrill me --
the idea of it does, but not the product -- maybe it’s a
wideopen form that’ll be able to come up w/ poems that’ll
really grab me, but i dunno. I’ve done some, i like em,
but i think there must be some barrier in the idea because
nothing in Space made me run wild, nor did any of my 50
or so similar ones (no -- take that back -- one poem,
“ratta” combines Coolidge concepts w/ syllables, stut-
tering & hysteria, but only that one) -- but poems like
Nitric Lateral did and others of mine. Which means that
44  The Language Letters

i’ll continue to do both. I think i can break new ground

& do things more exciting to me by adding other elements,
even if Grenier finds it confusing & would opt for a point
between Coolidge & Saroyan. “flying” was one of about 5
or so i did after reading Rothenberg, but throwing in a
little Coolidge -- as for it not relying as much “on a
previous literary convention (surrealism),” i dunno, i
didnt see that too much in JR, but as for not obliterating
the words per se as Coolidge does, you’re right -- if the
words arent obliterated into sound (″) or into visual pat-
terns (concrete poets) then you’ve got to move em & that,
for me, has always meant disconcerting clashes & frags
of images, drifts, punctures & whatnot -- i dont like as
much leaving them around for minimalist effect as i do
using them for mood (as Coleman is so great at) or starker
power.

The things in Field are like the one in Guabi, only using
longer lines & more trad. images & Americana words instead
of “fragmented talk” as the Guabi poem did. The Guabi
poem was the 2nd poem i wrote -- did it in Fall 1968. I
only did the 2, & then in Spring ’69 (giving you a quick
history as well as my goals, earlier) rewrote them under
the influence of Olson-Ashbery (technically, not Ash-
bery’s tone). Then in spring ’69 got hold of the Carroll
anthology & got turned on by Acconci-Coolidge, & started
reading. Spent the rest of ’69 being on the experimen-
tal wing of the NYC school & also writing a lot of poems
like the one in Guabi which no one ever accepted & since
i knew no poets, i got no good feedback except on my
experimental NYC (& even “straight,” i.e., silly, NYC
poems, which still pop up occasionally) -- then in ’70
i decided to take my Guabi style & make it into a more
conventional one. This was spring 1970, took a seminar
w/ Coleman at Hopkins, continued writing Coolidge and/
or 0-9 and/or Saroyan influenced NYC ditties, contin-
ued rewriting my draft of Guabi type poems -- so, i wrote
“Frontier” a 28 page sequence & got 8 taken by Field & 2
by Cafe Solo (at this point, age 22, i was easily swayed
 The Language Letters 45

by acceptance). By this time, i’d discovered Rothen-

berg & got snotty letters from Eshleman to bejewel my
drawer & Coleman liked everything i did, even the most
Guabi-Coolidge things -- so i wasnt swept into anymore
of a trad. style. Anyhow, in summer ’70 i continued all
these directions, spent 4 months on active duty in Army
Reserves (ugh, learning to type at Ft. Knox -- actually
wasnt so bad, shot pool, saw movies, read) & writing prose
pieces (of which i now have about 60 pages). So Fall of
’70 was wondering if prose might be the thing, getting no
response from any mags except NYC ones, which i’d grown
to get nothing out of (as Coolidge must’ve felt seeing
his poems along w/ mine, in The World, etc.) -- rewrote
a 55 page sequence “Brick Brae.” Then comes ’71 -- the
year ’70-’71 i wasnt in school either, got my masters in
Int’l Relations at Hopkins in ’70, then reserves & rest
of year off: writing, reading, goofing. So spring ’71,
got “Brick Brae” accepted at Mojo Navigatore [BA inserts:
you took 2, too] lots of NYC type acceptances -- dug Mer-
win’s Lice & Brigham’s Poems of Cold & wrote a 75 page
sequence of [BA inserts: more conservative] imagey-frag-
mented syntax type poems for the hell of it (& also for
acceptance mail, etc., blah blah). Plus more of all other
types: Guabi types, Coolidge types, in betweeners, etc.
etc. -- then met Mike Lally w/ a great friendship & got
the spirit moving again, spent the spring reading Marx-
ism, started doing collabs w/ Bill Zavatsky. Lots of NYC
type acceptances from summer til now (Paris Review again,
Blue Suede Shoes, Baloney Street, Toothpick, Toothpaste,
Penumbra, Sun, Roy Rogers, Telephone, Suction) most all
of which are word/object Coolidge things -- then this sum-
mer discovered orthodox surrealism & wanted to achieve its
effect tho not w/ its devices. Got accepted by Paul Car-
roll (mostly NYC fragmented poems tho) also spent spring
& summer ’71 rewriting a short book on French involvement
in IndoChina (reasons why) -- but didnt get it published
-- then started collaborations w/ Lally (fragmented sur-
real stuff), got here to Harvard Govt Dept (a year of
classes this year), getting interested in the political
46  The Language Letters

sociology (social basis-class basis-Marxist view) of

American foreign policy, tremendous amt. of work & high
pitch of interest -- then found out about you, Grenier,
good response from For Now & the discovery of the Eigner/
Coolidge axis which may make it less necessary to print
stuff in NYC mags, as well as providing a framework &
network (which i’ve never had before) to inform my work,
influences & directions & enthusiasm. So there you have
it, the full odyssey. Phew! Other factual info: married
Ellen 2½ years ago & next year (’72-’73) start disserta-
tion on social basis of US imperialism in Vietnam -- age
23, birthday April 1, 6 feet, short hair due to reserves
(from which trying to get C.O. discharge soon)

Back to yr letter -- once again, your feel for the “his-

tory” of this word/object poetry (exploring the reality of
language as key) is wonderful & very helpful. The dichot-
omy betw. Caterpillar & Paris Review (your having had one
poem in former & me one in latter shows our differing
pasts quite well and, for both, the similar need to break
away to a middle ground (as some of the NYCers are doing
more modestly, altho some are moving to the right, also,
toward less experimental work -- i.e., Anderson Benedikt,
etc.) -- the dichotomy is not just externally imposed;
it’s internally imposed too: most of the people in Cat,
not just Eshleman, think the NYers are full of shit & most
of the NYers might think almost all the CAT people ditto
(i.e., Donald Hall on Kelly: “an absolutely awful poet”),
tho maybe the NYers would be more tolerant, i dont know. I
didnt know Padgett & Shapiro were internal elitists. But
in ’64-’65 when Mother, etc. were starting, i dont think
they were very aware of the likes of Eshleman. Certainly
Bolinas is drawing a lot of it together (leaving a ragtag
force of NYers in NY, led in the south by Waldman, identi-
fying w/ Bolinas & w/ a large bunch of Koch-ites holding
out near Columbia -- Zavatsky, Violi, etc. Fagin).
 The Language Letters 47

I’ve never seen Kulchur or Lines but 0-9 seemed to offer

the greatest hope -- was too serious for the NYers, tho,
& not “emotional” enuf, i suspect for Eshleman & co (“fake
shamans,” as Zavatsky calls him) or not bodily enuf,
etc. etc. blah blah -- in other words, 0-9 had the poets
(Rothenberg, Mac Low, plus Coolidge, Giorno, plus the
“events” of Perreault, Acconci) but it didnt seem to have
any audience or something: i.e., not enuf young poets like
you & me at that time (well, shit, i wasnt even writing
much then) had found out that the emperors were wearing no
clothes. This is crucial. For a new “matrix” to start up,
as 0-9 tried to make one, the old schools have to be less
attractive, or else de-legitimized. In ’68 or ’69, every-
body young that wasnt into the “little” scene (à la Kuzma)
was either a Cat man or a NYC man, it seems. By ’71, i
guess, Eshleman’s pretentiousness has become de-legitimized
or something -- or people are trying to do new stuff, just
as by ’71 the self-­
indulgence of Berrigan or Padgett is not
an influence. Hence, you get revived interest in lots of
things that otherwise would’ve been strictly fringe phe-
nomenon: one of these is surrealism, another is the Eigner/
Coolidge conglomerate. As the front stage is ignored, the
stirrings at the sides are highlighted. And, ancestors
come to the fore: hence, Stein, Zukofsky (Bunting?), sur-
realists. Also, concrete poetry makes it big right at this
time. The schools collapse & lots of shit good shit sur-
vives & revives. I hope i’m right about this -- i suspect
concrete poetry, surrealism, the Waldman-Clark-Hollo-stuff,
the Coolidge-­
Grenier-Silliman-Saroyan stuff, my stuff & god
knows what else will have more space & room & good vibes,
as the Berrigans, Eshlemans & Kuzmas flood the market but
gross out the younger poets. But, who knows -- these old
magnets may have more pull than we think & we may continue
to find ourselves either isolated or else having to run w/
crowds we dont belong in.

A day later, i reread this, Caterpillar 17 arrives and

says #20 will be last issue -- and Paris Review about to
fold, too, i hear rumored. This is crucial: the Cat men
48  The Language Letters

will still shoot out their little Black Sparrow books &
Harper & Row books but those 2 mags were what did a lot of
influence (plus the 1st Carroll anthology for the NYers).
Now maybe all the books being published plus things like
Cat anthol & 2nd Carroll anthology can keep their influ-
ence surviving a little more, but not much. The activity
is much less visible now for influencable poets, like me 2
years ago -- thus the field may be wider open.

um de dum Department
Where is Grenier’s “On Speech.” Havent seen cloth by
Saroyan. Please explain again how Grenier differs from
you & Coolidge, it was over my head (at this late hour).
Thanks for the great Barthes quote -- i’ll find you a
similar one in One Dimensional Man if you dont already
have it known -- Wittgenstein! -- as for Eshleman, case
dismissed: Grenier may not have “much to say” but what
a lame question. Poets dont talk, they make (the best
analogy i’ve ever found to my conception of poetry is
non-representational ceramic sculpture), he’s not saying,
he’s not laying down the truth, as Eshleman tries to do,
or to “evoke the particular” à la Kuzma, but he’s just
making something exciting that stands. To do this you
dont have to give up the word as an element of meaning,
or as a possible building block of mood or as something,
which in combination, can startle -- as Coolidge does,
thereby i think impoverishing things unnecessarily -- you
just have to give up the word as a vehicle for author’s
thoughts or author’s perceptions or author’s emotion.
Hey, that sounded pretty good.

Glad to hear Grenier is prolific -- wish there were more

outlets to get work like his around. As for Zukofsky, i
retract everything i say. I was forgetting about the Cat-
ullus translations, which are as crucial to this lineage
as Stein (dont forget Bunting’s Briggflatts). Duncan i’ve
always avoided, altho you might be right. Andrea Wyatt
is nothing. As for Rose Demonics (& the more traditional
Agons) -- they’re sequenced in a couple separate years &
 The Language Letters 49

are what i mean in the above: fragmented, words sprung

loose but not decimated or turned into mere sound -- his
words are fragile & attractive, even beautiful objects --
they have wonderfully magic sound, meaning, mood, float &
occasionally startle.

Glad you took a poem by Mike (Lally) -- he’s about 30 &

a “talk” poet (except in our collabs) & mostly a story
writer actually but has lots of talent (i.e., is a helluva
talker!) but is less interested in this whole direction
we’re talking about, altho i’m working on him -- we’re
going to end up in half a dozen mags together -- did he
mention DiPalma or did you just find a resemblance (they
were close friends at Iowa) -- anyhow, if the poems he
sent didnt seem tops it might just be the choice (altho
he doesnt write too much). But he’s my best poet friend
& good jazz listening smoking writing buddy -- i’ll get
some of the collabs to you in the future & you can see the
“team” at work.

Space (lack of variety ≠ experimentalism) -- the lack of

variety (i.e., “conceptual coherence & purity of vision”)
is irrelevant if you see the book as a single poem & not
as a representative 1st collection. You’re right -- a spe-
cific assertion. To get interest in Coolidge, he needs
to be in an all-avant garde anthology or else in some-
thing like 0-9, otherwise the narrower assertion seems too
insistently made.

Kostelanetz -- never read his omnipresent writings, but

i’m always interested in gossip & critical opinions. Also,
what’s the dope on Grossinger & what stigma [is] Saroyan
stuck with??

As for me & $ -- it’s not exactly lying around in bar-

rels, but i thought i’d offer a few. Reason i dont start
a mag is i’m not ready in my mind (i.e., 2 months ago it
would’ve been completely different) -- altho i’ve toyed w/
the idea & if i do one, it’ll be modeled after Tottel’s.
50  The Language Letters

Mostly it’s question of TIME, going to grad school, writ-

ing poems, corresponding, outside reading, friends, send-
ing poems out -- dont have time to have a mag unless it
was “closed,” which i’d never want, just couldnt answer
all the mail. Possible after June when i’m done [with]
all my course work -- but i think if i wait a year or two
i’ll have a better sense of what people i should get in
touch with (as you can see, a lot of people i know noth-
ing about). Since poetry is kind of a avocation & i dont
read much of it (never did) so dont really know what’s
happening in the hinterlands -- if my knowledge of who &
what keeps increasing at its present rate, tho, i ought
to be ready to start something in a year or so, w/out
having to depend so much on older contacts w/ people who
arent really doing the kind of poetry i’d like to bring
some attention to: I sense this is what happened w/ Tot-
tel’s until recently & if i’d started a mag a year ago,
no matter how experimental avant garde my stuff was plus
Coolidge, Acconci & whoever i know of, i’d had to fill it
with people i had contact (only thru mail) with & that’d
be NYC people. This is much less true now & in a year or
so may be totally untrue. So, we wait. Thanks for the good
letter (altho i cant keep up this correspondence pace at
all, sorry). Looking forward to CROW (& not eating it!).

all best,

Bruce

————

5. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews (12/26/71)

START HERE**

Dear Bruce

This can hardly be termed a letter (notes, frag-

ments, scraps, enclosures) but as a form it’s at least
as together as I’ve been -- the selective service has
 The Language Letters 51

selectively serviced me again, this time by altering

alternative service, throwing my plans into a limbo: now
I’ve 6 to 7 wks to come up w/ a position for my CO work or
I may find myself in North Dakota (?!). . . . I typed up
the other notes between letters to prospective employers,
Tottel’s 8, several poems, a prose thing or two, etc. The
3 poems enclosed (two of wch were written after the other
notes) are for your perusal -- between the minimal things
you’ve seen, these & the relatively conservative “older”
poems in This 2, just out, maybe you can piece together
a sense of my complete range (the poems in This 2 were a
good example of me at my most timid, written in school
right after the breakup of my marriage & while my grand-
father, who raised me, was going thru a hideously slow
death . . . that I can feel close to 4 of the 5 is a sign
of something, I guess -- they were the poems that made
the minimal things that followed, inevitable ((in fact, a
lot of the specific devices the later poems use are being
developed there)). Mixed feelings & a Zukofskian prelude,
I guess.) The recent things I really like -- wch may be a
sign of nothing (I find it hard to judge my own work accu-
rately for almost a year after I write a given thing, wch,
since I’m usually such a severe judge of everybody else’s
work, is a flaw I wish I had a solution to.)

This 2 looks solid -- Coolidge, Eigner & Grenier super-

fine, also work by Jim Preston & Lewis MacAdams that is
superb (MacAdams is a funny one: his book The Poetry Room
seemed not much, but since then I’ve seen 8 or 10 things
w/ a simple energy to the language therein that wholly
eclipses the anemic tones of the Schjeldahls etc. . . .
maybe he will be something yet) + Rae Armantrout, Saroyan,
Gitin (better things of Marcia Lawther than I’ve seen
before). A few flubs, most of wch, if not all, are pals of
Watten’s (Morice, Marshall, Will). 100 pp. (aha): if it
can keep on snowballing, bigger and better each time maybe
it will be the mag everybody’s been waiting for. I hope.
(Bob’s going to be here for a visit in 2 weeks -- unex-
pected delight).
52  The Language Letters

Tottel’s 8 awaits the printer (or, more accurately, the

$ for the printer) -- 30 pp. itself, also really solid
(more compact than This, but no wasted space): from front
to back Rothenberg (a poem, 5 naming events), Jim Preston
(3 short poems, 1 longer), Eigner (6 poems), Richard Tag-
gett, David Melnick, Kelly (1 poem each), me (11 poems on
one page), Enslin, John Taggart, John Thorpe (1 poem each)
you (pp. 11-18), Watten (3 short poems), David McAleavey
(6 short pieces), Michael Lally, Wm. B. Hunt (1 each),
Coolidge (4 poems), & Ray DiPalma (5 short poems & a dia-
logue in verse) -- strong throughout.

Typing out anybody’s poems is a good way to learn them, to

approximate the actual act of composing them (try typing
out a half dozen of Eigner’s poems & see if your response
isnt one of amazement at the precision & the intensity of
the forces at work therein). . . . Anyhow, here are some
random responses to typing up several pages of your own
work (1) the untitled poem you sent w/ your 1st submission
is stronger-in-relation to the other 2 (not to run these
down in any way) than I’d thot at first (2) “flying” seems
lighter than I’d thot (I had at first liked it best of
all) & (3) B & C are the strongest points in NITRIC LAT-
ERAL PRAYER -- the absolute center being “jumping magpies”
(which, prophetically, is the exact center of Tottel’s 8
-- in quite a few ways).

I find tho some hesitations, small pts that cause me to

wonder at specifics (tho not to reject): if read too casu-
ally, NITRIC sounds like an anthro-text-cut-up; I wonder
of the value of the use of a too specialized vocabulary,
of exoticness for the sake of being exotic (wch, as I
often used distinct terminologies like that, is for me an
important question); also of the over-emphatic terms you
often use, implying an urgent tone throughout (it sounds
shrill -- romanticized; it also has a tendency to keep
the tone too much the same throughout) -- too much blood,
teeth, starving, swords (a too violent vision?).
 The Language Letters 53

It’s a sign of the level of yr work that it raises these

questions for me, that they are questions that relate, in
the long run, more to my work than to judgements of yr
own. (Likewise this long letter, if it is one, is probably
more for my own benefit (?)).

There was a bookfair in SF, the underground presses, lit-

tle stores, etc. -- w/ a big reading (for free!) of Cree-
ley & Dorn -- Creeley read a whole long prose thing, w/ a
big tone from Stein, Beckett, Robbe-Grillet (as cf. his
earlier stories wch sound like Dahlberg, Lawrence & Hem-
ingway) & Dorn’s crazy comicbook Slinger (as Melnick sez:
it’s the Don Juan of the 20th Cent.). Several thousand
people in a smoky little auditorium (including the whole
Bolinas gang). . . .

A curious incident -- David Bromige, a British-born,

Canadian citizen, now permanently in the US, hugely
influenced by Duncan (a friend) & old acquaintance so-so
of Bob’s & mine thot that Crow (wch I hope has gotten
there by now) was impossibly far out, unreadable (this
was when he’d gotten an early galley-proof, for a blurb)
& then w/ my later work & Tottel’s & This, he really got
totally bugged -- i.e., his safe preconceptions being
undercut -- he tried to write me a long letter (wch once
last summer I saw several fragments of) but never fin-
ished it, cldnt figure out exactly why it bugged him so
much, what was wrong w/ it, how one read it etc. . . .
anyhow, he was down here for a day last wk, he, Melnick &
I spent an afternoon over several pitchers of beer, & it
turns out that he finally had to sit down & try to prove
to himself that it (This, Tottel’s, Crow, etc.) was all
so much bullshit by writing it & saying “see, anybody can
do that” -- anyway, after 60 pp. a cpl of months’ work
trying to prove it, he’s not so sure.

What you say about influence interests me -- it’s only

been in the past 18 months or so that I’ve felt my influ-
ences to be restricted simply to my peers, as it should
54  The Language Letters

be, that I’d used up (“ ”) the older folks. The crux to

influence, it seems to me, is being able to turn to X Y
& Z w/ the expectation of finding something NEW & being
often gratified & then trying these new things on one-
self -- in a beginning writer this can be a common occur-
rence, wch is why it’s important I think to read almost
everything -- at least until one knows what is not of much
worth, use, interest. I dont think Eshleman or even Kelly,
who’s infinitely more talented, have anything NEW to offer
a yng writer (not to say that their work is at this pt of
no value, but not of that type of value any further), nor
Berrigan & certainly never Padgett. So I expect a natural
decline (& little or no need for the type of essay that
Bob does wch proclaims such decline, however indirectly)
in their influence. I’m sure that, as you put it, “the old
magnets may have more pull” but pull isnt what counts (!)
-- in fact, look at the 2nd generation projectivists --
Blackburn, Dorn, McClure, Geo. Stanley, Bromige, etc. etc.
Some are clearly more talented as individuals than their
forebears -- Blackburn was always a clear & even crafts-
man, more sensitive to the spoken word than Olson ever
was; but his accomplishment by comparison is minor -- in
250 years he might be the poet the scholars are digging
their false teeth into, not Olson, but not sooner (& w/
good reason). The whole area of influence is a problematic
little quagmire, getting into questions of value, origi-
nality (a spurious concept), traditions, etc. I doubt that
anybody who spends his time now being influenced by such
as Berrigan, Eshleman etc. is going to be of much interest
to me (the current word-of-mouth pheenom in the CAT group
is a Yale student named David Wilk . . . but the one thing
of his I’ve seen was a zero). Tho people do pass thru
those phases.

I’m gonna fold this up & mail the whole thing off to you
come mañana. Be well, thanks for the xmas card.

Ron
 The Language Letters 55

On Elliott Coleman

I went & reread DEMONICS [RS annotates: (not the book)],

Mockingbirds at Fort McHenry [RS annotates: liked these
best], a short poem “Solo” (for Kim) & a review of R. P.
Warren, all in Poetry Chicago. I can see where he would be
open to what you’re doing, certainly, but by comparison
his work seems slight (even in terms of his own generation
-- Zukofsky has levels of nuance, tonal control & percep-
tion that run rings around him).

I still cant find Field (alas) . . . #4 is the one in the

one store that ever carries it.

Surrealism in Rothenberg: see “The Night the Moon Was a

Spider,” “Invincible Flowers,” “A Poem for the Weather,”
“Three Landscapes,” “The Stationmaster’s Lament,” “A Side
of Beef,” “Poems for the Hell of Hungry Ghosts,” “The
Seven Hells of the Jigoku Zoshi,” etc., all in POEMS FOR
THE GAME OF SILENCE.

I’m enclosing Schwerner’s typescript (or his xerox

thereof) of Constellations -- ignore the pen & pencil
marks (he omits the glosses of SEAWEED, wch Black Sparrow
published in ’69).

Your vision of the collapse of the big mags (Paris Rev

& Cat) sounds reasonable to me, totally. The only per-
son in #17 (wch I havent bought, only looked at in the
store) that was really worth the trouble was Tom Meyer
(who, at 24, has come to the conclusion that ((1)) he
really is one of “them” & ((2)) that they are collaps-
ing, wch depresses him, tho he doesnt want to change).
Question is what to do abt it? Stony Brook cost 7 grand
an issue to put out, wch is more than I’ve earned over
the last 3 years; I wldnt be surprised if Cat costs
2,500/issue either. & the Paris Rev was funded, more
or less, out of the Aga Khan’s estate as I understood
it (tho his boy, Yaya, seems to be having a time of it,
56  The Language Letters

dont he?). Pound more or less disappeared after A DRAFT

OF 30 CANTOS until the Pisan ones, WCW all the way until
Paterson I-IV was published, Zukofsky until Henry Rago
printed him in Poetry in the ’60s, Bunting until 1964
. . . all for the lack of the proper platform. (Question
is: how do we get it?)

Grenier’s “On Speech” is in the back of THIS 1.

Yr analogy of yr work w/ non representational ceramic

sculpture is GREAT!!

Lally didnt mention DiPalma (you did!) . . . tho Ray

(who’s suddenly decided that I’m the depository of all
stray thots -- 5 letters in 3 days) did a book I know
of him. DiPalma has a ton of Coolidge imitations + some
others that show the influence (those that are direct
derivations dont make it, he doesnt, or didnt respond to
the potentials at all, but those others that are more
himself but which incorporate bits & pieces ((& only
bits & pieces)) manage to do quite a bit of interesting
stuff).

Grossinger is the son of the Art of Jewish Cooking Jeannie

Grossinger & of Grossinger’s, which is the borscht belt
almost all by itself. His writing is not even as sensi-
tive as Eric Segal’s or Rod McKuen’s (no joke) but because
IO has put out several issues involving many people like
Kelly, Olson, Blackburn before he died, etc., he’s gotten
lots of nice things sd of him & has 4 or 5 books hideously
close to one another (my favorite Grossinger is the review
of The Graduate in Cat -- the shallowest movie meets its
perfect critic who of course sees it as the archetypal
flick & has this unbelievable description of the girl
as Woman, capital W, who is, according to Grossinger, a
vegetable -- if it wasnt simply the most viciously sex-
ist piece on earth, it would be funny). Try reading him
closely some day. I mean it. Sentence by sentence. Count
generalities, name droppings, sweeping generalizations,
 The Language Letters 57

needless flourishes, self-righteous tone, etc. (If there

were 3 writers on this planet whose output I cld stop,
just by the wishing, Grossinger, along w/ Bukowski &
Kuzma, wld be in there.)

Saroyan, who is, of course, son of Wm. (My Name is Aram),

grew up w/ access to many good people, was into his thing
as early as 1964, but went almost 5 years w/ almost no
positive response, then Random House took him up, Sander
Vanocur read all of Pages on the NBC nat’l news, cover to
cover in 2½ minutes, NYTimes articles, etc. Success as a
sideshow freak, a joke: he quit writing altogether for
some time, he may still not be working. (I’ve got lots of
hesitations abt his work, but he did open up a ton of ter-
ritory; I just fear that he may have been like the guys in
the first line of any invasion who get shot down.)

On Surrealism

What I take your use of the word “surreal” to mean:

that you want a web or weave of words that imply (but
not “describe”) a content, to be responded to at affec-
tive subcognitive visceral levels. A possible continuum:
explicit content (Rbt Lowell, WCW, Kuzma), implicit con-
tent (thou), “non” content (Grenier, Coolidge)?? Looked at
in terms of words and word relationships, it appears that
you want the associative fields (what is usually thought
of in linguistics as a “paradigm” or the “paradigmatic
axis,” & by some of the French structuralists, noting that
the concept axis is an artificial & misleading construct,
the “system”) of your various words to overlap, the dis-
orientation which you speak of occurring between (among)
these fields. As in NITRIC LATERAL PRAYER.

If this is so, then:

1) it is not surrealism,
2) it provides a solid basis for distinguishing your work,
goals, methods & intentions from Grenier, Coolidge, etc.
58  The Language Letters

1) Any movement in poetry, if it is more than just a loose

association of friends (the objectivists, for example) or
suffering from a totally muddled theoretical base (the
deep imagists of the early ’60s) can be distilled into a
handful of operational principles, with a specific object
or objects in mind -- means by which to describe some-
thing. For example, projectivism describes the voice. Sur-
realism describes the unconscious or, more accurately,
certain didactic ideas about the nature of the uncon-
scious, usually in terms of an external (referential)
landscape or world, clearly related, but distorted (dis-
oriented) in its relationships, to be read more or less
as an externalization of the writer’s unconscious psychic
relationships. Its content is explicit. Disorientation
occurs at the level of the signified not the signifiers
(as in your own case). To define both your method & sur-
realism as forms of surrealism seems to me to be a con-
sequence of the fact that the term “disorientation” is
overly vague (& given the psychological implications in
our culture of the state to which it refers, one can see
why it has remained as vague as it has). It’s a relational
term: disoriented-­
to-(from?)-what is the real question.
There is a clear division between wht you are doing & what
surrealism does.

Automatic writing, aesthetically closer to dadaist theory,

is a somewhat different problem, but the structure of the
reasoning is the same.

Surrealism, because its disorientation (the effect of the

unexpected) lies in the signified, appears to me to be
a highly predictable & not very interesting technique.
Nobody, for example, has done more to trivialize death
than Merwin, or Knott narcissism, etc. Outside of the
occasional poem interesting because of its technical skill
(“The Hydra” in LICE), I cant say I’ve ever found much in
its American brands. It seems historically tied down to
what is, by now, a very crude conception of the world of
the mind. Because your work involves different levels,
 The Language Letters 59

this doesnt hold for it, a good test as to whether it is

“surreal” or not.

One point, worth making here (a good transitional point)

is that your attraction to work of “more variety, power &
much more of a startling mysterious disorienting effect”
is more or less outside of my own value system. The first
two qualities, at least in those poets you mention, seem
to me to be debatable & the last I simply dont value. I’m
positive this would be true for Grenier & would imagine
it to be in Coolidge’s case as well. Tone, texture, bal-
ance (what Zukofsky calls “perfect rest,” the effect of
wch is his own test of a poem) seem to me as valuable as
disorientation (or shock) in a poem. Coolidge’s book did
& does excite me, for what it is as well as for the huge
field that it opens up. That it is not “hard-hitting”
(or, better yet, since it will open up a good comparison
later, “dynamic”) does not detract from it, for me, one
bit. Such a quality does not seem to me to be necessary
to all good art. It may be present, it may not. But it’s
not necessary. The painters who I ususally think are the
closest to the type of art that is involved here, and
with whom I often analogize my own work (a good way to
make the noninformed see that it isnt just so much “way-
out” business), are Josef Albers, Mark Rothko & Frank
Stella, none of whom are “dynamic” but are pretty much
“static” in their works. I imagine this is simply a mat-
ter of personality, like my preferring Satie to, say,
Mahler.

2) Coolidge’s poems, like yours, because they build

upon a number of words tend to submerge the presence of
the associational field of any given word & to accent the
relationships between the fields. However, & it’s the
key difference, his fields are discrete, do not overlap.
The words “hover,” each mutually alienated from the oth-
ers. The very best ones have a fine & delicate balance
about them, like many magnets caught in a field of repel-
lent forces. Grenier, by working with smaller units, can
60  The Language Letters

emphasize smaller units, bring them forward. In a poem

like

nights now

the “weight” or, as Olson wld have it, “quantity” in

each syllable is given a large stress, wch in a poem of
Coolidge’s, of anywhere from 25 to 100 words wld not be
lost as such, but wld no longer be readily apparent. Wld
therefore be submerged.

The other key element is the problem of the building up

of forms: Coolidge often has poems in what I term “plas-
tic” forms: a series of X-line stanzas, a symmetrical
pattern or something of that nature -- he then (this is
only in the loosest sense to be taken literally) “fills”
these forms, like Jello molds, w/ words. If there’s any-
thing “questionable” abt his work for me, that’s it. Bob
on the other hand believes in the very old & honored idea
of organic form. But he does not believe in connections
between words, in what linguists term the syntagmatic axis
(perpendicular in their models to the paradigmatic one).
So it’s only w/ the greatest difficulty that he can build
poems up of any size. You, w/ your implicit content, have
a system already by which to build & to build organically
-- your forms (at least those I’ve seen) do not seem plas-
tic. When I try longer forms (see the poem enclosed) I
usually work on formal relations: sound associations, bal-
ance, semantics, etc.

The last distinguishing point seems to be that to which any

of us is committed to being an active (vs. passive) artist,
the extent to which to consciously manipulate material. Bob
wants I think to be a completely passive writer -- to write
as the words come to him. He will sit at a party, say, &
record phrases as they go by. While the whole idea of found
art is interesting (& Mac Low, Giorno & Antin have all done
good things therewith), I dont buy working furiously at
being passive -- if it’s not a contradiction, it’s at least
 The Language Letters 61

not part of my personality. Coolidge does manipulate, but

only moderately, you & I moreso.

Question: How do you reconcile your apparent approval of

Zavatsky’s characterization of the Cat people as “phony
shamans” with your desire to work ethnographic content
into your poems? A question of degree? kind?

By the way, are you in touch w/ Zavatsky? He, presumably,

printed 2 of the poems in an issue of Roy Rogers given
over to one-line poems; but never sent me a copy (I moved
about 8 times in the 6 weeks since I originaly sent him
the poems, from Buffalo back here by way of Trumansburg,
Berkeley, Kensington Calif., other parts of Oakland etc.).
A friend at SUNY at Buffalo sd he used them, so I assume
that he did.

————

6. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman (1/17/72), excerpt

Ron,

thanks for everything -- your letters have been impor-

tant in lieu of the kind of propulsive excitement best
generated in person, about poetry -- your openness about
the other things happening in your life is warm & wel-
come, it places things in fuller context. My own personal
life has been on a ridiculously even keel, leaving room
for energies & enthusiasms that usually only need point-
ing -- grad school, after a year off, gives a frame for
my intellectual energy & detracts from the poetry but not
completely: mostly it speeds things up so all the pieces,
if they’re going to fit at all, must be thrown together at
a speed-pace. But the people here, the school, the town,
everything is new & not yet stale, so a “high” resounds.
62  The Language Letters

Somehow, because i dont have the time to SWAMP myself in

poetry i can keep a better distance and a clearer head,
more critical & less compulsive -- the opposite way
remains fine, but it’s one i’ll only be able to fall into
at times, sample, rejuvenate. My interests are wildly
spread out & this, in itself, helps put each into per-
spective & the time which might propel me into any one is
made up for by a different kind of propulsion -- that of
no-time, which as i said throws things together.

The things of MOMENT are This 2, Tottel’s 8, & the three

poems you sent & Crow & what i’ve been doing -- i’ll hold
off on those for this second & comment on your comments:

Elliott Coleman -- because the book (Rose Demonics) may be

the single key catalyst in getting me to start writing in
’69 i am partial. As far as Zukofsky goes, i suspect he’s
perhaps yr favorite, but i will admit straight off that he
doesnt do a thing for me. This is merely an eccentricity
on my part, but i think a crucial one because this is the
nourishing side of what you & Grenier & Coolidge are doing.
i’ve never cared for Creeley either. Somehow they are too
“abstract” for me, but i’m not sure if i can clarify it.
They dont excite me. This relates clearly to what you say
in your “Surrealism” part of the letter, it’s a preference
on my part for power/startling disorienting effect/variety/
dynamic -- i admit, as you say, that these qualities are
not necessary to good art. I admit Zukofsky into the realm
of great artists. But, my preferences as reader are differ-
ent from my critical evaluations and it is the former that
influence my own work. Thus, you/Creeley/Grenier/Zukofsky
has to do w/ reading preferences as much as w/ critical
evaluations. What you call tone/texture/balance/perfect
rest are what i need to work on to make my own work more
interesting to me qua reader -- but its present character,
which pleases me, bases itself on the qualities you may
value less. In other words, . . . blah blah blah. My 1st
interest in Coolidge was as an extension of what Ashbery
was doing in Tennis Court Oath with fragmentation which,
 The Language Letters 63

to me, had a startling disorienting effect -- it was not an

interest in Coolidge that derived from what he was doing
as an extension of Stein (who i’d not then read) or Zukof-
sky or Creeley in the way of texture & tone. Thus, we may
have gotten to similar places in our reading thru differ-
ent routes. Again, my appreciation of Coleman stemmed from
his use of single words (as a style) & from the marvelous
vocabulary & the special texture it created, a texture i
dont find in Creeley/Zukofsky who may be textural masters,
more so than Coleman. In other words, that Z runs rings
around Coleman in “levels of nuance, tonal control & per-
ception” did not matter to me then, 1969, & probably, even
now, are nowhere near as much the total focus of my inter-
est as they may be for you.

Hence my preference for “imagery” (even tho scrambled &

fragmented) & also for exotic words, vocabulary, a collage
technique which emphasizes COLLISION rather than balance.

I’m not sure how clear this is but i think i’ve hit upon
a crucial distinction between us, which relates to the
original ground of our work, the “base,” from which later
development derives, as a superstructure. My own base,
i guess, is a more highly charged (romantic?) emotional
imagery-filled work -- from this base i have come to add
on a concern w/ balance, form, etc.: concerns which are
at the base of what you start from: Creeley-Coolidge-­
Zukofsky. Coolidge & Coleman & Acconci & Ashbery (& Olson)
appealed to me in 1969 & still, because of what they had
to offer as a style through which i could express these
more basic concerns of mine -- thus, the use of more
explicitly powerful imagery-words-collisions in a frag-
mented way (even to the point where the word stood alone).
But the word standing alone in Coleman was a vehicle for
these more romantic (?) concerns -- it wasnt an object.
As for texture & tone, i’ve always been interested in
them even if in a different way & a different texture &
tone which i didnt find in Zukofsky but did find in peo-
ple like Césaire, Merwin, etc. who were not attuned to the
64  The Language Letters

stylistic mode of Coleman-Coolidge-Ashbery. So, basically,

i’ve tried to combine these things. Now, again, the major
influences on my work in the last 6 months has been these
concerns w/ which you’re infecting me &, in particular,
w/ the work of Eigner. Somehow, Eigner & Coolidge have an
interest for me which is still similar to their early one
(pointing the way to new styles) but has recently opened
into a carefuller look at craft and precision.

[. . . .]

As for CAT & PARIS REVIEW: their collapse will only send
the rats scurrying. The whole NYC school is one sinking
ship & a lot of people are either going to have to jump
on new ones (as MacAdams, for example, seems to be) or
else get frustrated. Ditto for the CATS. If there were any
Pounds or Zukofskys or Buntings among them it might be too
bad that an outlet didnt exist for them (Williams, by the
way, i think you’re wrong about -- the period of disappear-
ance you imply for him was one of prolific (& published)
prose writing) -- but. . . .

As far as how do we get the mags we need: I dont know,

unless a dozen Tottel’s come into being or a bunch of little
book publishers. One Tottel’s keeps us all inspired even if
it doesnt net any influence the way a big mag would. This
fills another side of the gap, altho i detected a lot of
self-indulgence & confusion & eccentricities. [BA annotates:
also i’m not sure an audience exists. I think we need read-
ings & explaining articles & backers more now than anything,
as well as mags, like Tottel’s, only partly devoted to the
new thing, so it “frames” it & gives it the kind of respect-
ability that someone like DiPalma can move ahead from.
Eigner, in other words, balances Coolidge. What say?]

Let me get this off to you & i’ll comment on Crow, This,
Tottel’s 8 & the 3 you sent me soon. Write back a lot.

whoopee
Bruce
 The Language Letters 65

————

7. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews (2/3/72)

Dear Bruce --

Yr long letter makes many good points, thrusts -- yr clas-

sification of the major dimensions of the sort of thing
we’re doing into the questions of focus & building are,
I think, exactly the point (& you were generally correct
to put me “with Coolidge” on the first of those, but only
insofar as I tend to manipulate that level a lot, like
the lens of a camera -- pans & closeups -- &, as to the
2nd, as you asked, I guess I’d like to build up long poems
organically -- wch means coming to a new understanding w/
just those terms & wch I’ve gotten nowhere near yet). Your
lists of preferences were more or less correct (w/ reser-
vations -- I have only the most fleeting interest in the-
ater & not much more in sculpture & so dont have much in
the way of such preferences there; & dont read much fic-
tion at all -- so Beckett & Robbe-Grillet perhaps, tho it
means very little there -- my allegiances there go finally
to the later Joyce (& the Faulkner of Absalom, Absalom!).
In music, I do love Satie, & like Bach but more than
Johann I find myself drawn to such as Steve Reich (listen
to the Columbia recording of Violin Phase -- w/ solo by
Paul Zukofsky, curiously enough -- & It’s Gonna Rain) &
sometimes Harry Partch; also Xenakis, Penderecki, Antheil,
Ives, Cage, Feldman.

2 things tho do disturb me -- one is a seeming contra-

diction: IF YOUR NONREPRESENTATIONAL CERAMIC SCULPTURE
IS CLOSE TO RAUSCHENBERG, AS YOU SAY, THEN IT’S NOT NON-
REPRESENTATIONAL, IS IT? I’ve seen 100s of his works,
not one of wch was nonrepresentational. It seems a sim-
ple & obvious question. The second thing is that, no, I
have no such gap between my interest as a reader & that
as a critic -- if I did I’d wonder abt my role as one of
those -- I really do get excited by Stein Pound Williams
66  The Language Letters

Zukofsky Coolidge Eigner Grenier Creeley Duncan et al.,

more than by anybody else -- I have to some extent merely
created an analysis to justify my taste as a reader (I
think this is true for every critic, or for every person
who holds critical attitudes -- that is why I think they
always have to be seen as arbitrary critiques & personal
statements, & not as pseudoscientific pathologies such
as the goons of the MLA wld have). While I do occasion-
ally enjoy a novel by somebody such as Barth, Pynchon
or Cortazar, it is at such a level of secondary, almost
idle, involvement as to be not much more than the relax-
ation I cld have had w/ most Hollywood flicks. I’ve never
read Ishmael Reed tho I’ve seen him read -- he isnt very
impressive upon a stage -- a black Ferlinghetti (?). Gass
has done some reviews that were well written for NYR, but
I never was able to get thru Omensetter & his long posi-
tion paper on the use of metaphor as the key to all lit-
erature in a recent New American Review made me conclude
-- hastilly? -- (I have a feeling that my spelling is all
screwy today -- I’ve got tonsillitis & perhaps some strep
& am upon penicillin & havent been able to rely on my
beloved coffee for 3 days now --) made me conclude that
Gass wasnt a serious guy, or that he was off somewhere
in the ’40s (where he’d be at home w/ the surrealists).
Pelieu is a bundle of self-indulgence to no perceivable
cause -- I liked him a lot when I was much younger (7
years) when I thot anything that didnt look like what I’d
had thrust at me in high school was experimental -- but
he’s not, he’s just confused.

Thanks for the card w/ word of the Chi Rev deal -- I

havent the time & told them either to coax you from thy
neomonastic studies or to approach either Ray DiPalma or
Clark Coolidge for something. I’ve had years of dealings
w/ those people, I dont trust their judgment at all.

As to Ithaca House, I’m not down on them, but they’re on a

funny trip & I cldnt promise (nor for that matter predict)
 The Language Letters 67

what might happen to a ms. of yrs -- Tottel’s has run work

of no less than 4 Ithaca House poets -- myself, DiPalma,
Melnick & McAleavey -- but there’s no guarantee to [be]
eked out of that. Rochelle Nameroff has had a ms. there for
nigh onto 6 months, w/out any word (it took that long for
both Melnick & I as well & DiPalma, well, he was on his way
to Europe & rushed for time & Kit Hathaway -- the William
Hathaway of the Quickly Aging Here anthology -- sd, that he
cldnt get the bk, DiPalma’s, thru the editorial staff w/out
cutting some poems, so Ray sd ok, not knowing wch ones &
it was only the most conservative ones that were left when
he finally saw what they’d done). So. That is sort of how
it is. If you’ve got the poems, time, patience, etc., good
luck. The fellow to send the ms. to is David McAleavey (RD
3, Trumansburg NY 14886), who is one of the most powerful
people of the collective. It’s a funny scene: Baxter Hatha-
way -- Kit’s pop -- runs the creative writing program at
Cornell & funds both the bks & an art gallery, wch his wife
runs, the printing press in the rear, all losing proposi-
tions financially. & while the press is run on a majority
rule semi-communal basis -- there is an understanding that
Baxter, who thot Olson an unforgivable barbarian when it
came to form, has something approximating a veto.

McAleavey is a good guy, an old pal, a semi-professional

grad student & a man who was raised on John Berryman etc.
(he bought Space at my urging but I dont know whether or
not he ever actually read it). He dug the Gitin # most of
all the Tottel’s. But if you deal w/ him directly, you’ll
have somebody specific to call on if & when you want to ask
abt what’s happened to it, somebody who’ll be capable of
keeping an eye on it & so forth. Be sure & mention yr pub-
lications in the Paris Rev, Field & the Carroll Anthology
#2 & whatever other such kudos. You can of course use my
name -- tho I wonder if that’s any help -- & I imagine that
you cld get away w/ using DiPalma’s as well. If it does
come down to it, I’d be glad to do a blurb for the thing &
I think Ray wld too. (I’m sure I cld get him to do it.)
68  The Language Letters

Is that enough info? I’ve just gotten settled here, an

old neoVictorian flat done up more modernly (the heat &
plumbing work & well, wch is a rarity in this town) -- the
people in the flat are all into their own trips -- from
mystical ones to a former student of Vito Acconci’s & John
Perrault’s who’s preparing to go to school out here. It’s
a nice place & SF is both new (tho I’ve lived here before)
& full of things to do -- several reading series & so
forth (there was a big one for Patchen’s widow last night,
Duncan Creeley Snyder many Kayak poets, David Henderson,
Ishmael Reed, Sotere Torregian etc.). Free movies in some
places, etc. Looks like fun.

Ron

————

8. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews (2/10/72)

Dear Bruce --

right back! Your “book” arrived today, the sun is setting

right in my eyes, what a bitch, it’ll go behind that apt
house soon -- it’d better! Hello.

First off general

responses yes I am harsh in criticisms, I usually am
so, nothing else will ever really be of use & certainly
has to be of more help than the “what’s all this weird
stuff abt or for?” that I’ve of course gotten a manure
pile of & reckon you have too -- people who’ve known me
for a long long time (McAleavey & Melnick, for example,
know I’ll do it all the time, Mac makes use of it). Any-
how, I dont mean to come on as tho negative in any of the
important dimensions -- just the opposite, you’re one of
the handful of people whom I agree w/ abt the important
things & yr work I like; hopefully w/ that understood (is
 The Language Letters 69

that understood?), we can begin, any of us, all, to dig

in deeper . . . & that surely is where we ought to go,
right?

& as a matter of policy we’d all profit I suspect if

we didnt focus upon differences of temperament (shrill v.
bland or urgent v. balanced, depending upon pts of view).

I
dont think really it’s much use to criticize (o, it went
down! just now!) poems many years old -- I think much of
Crow interesting in what is to me already many irrelevant
contexts; I dont see how anything sd of those poems now
cld affect what I will be doing next . . . this is proba-
bly true in the case of yr own poems.

OK, that’s the gen-

eral “tonal” response first off, now to go down by items
(notice how letters of this fashion will work like chess
games, forms of logic, a curious but interesting-to-me
dialectic),

what are your papers on imperialism abt, spe-

cifically? I’d really be interested to know. I’ve always
seen imperialism as one extension of capitalism (as racism
is another & the one that I come into closest contact w/
in my CO work). Grenier’s righteous attitude abt his apo-
liticalness has always irritated me -- I’ve wanted to work
out (I wont have the time for this for years, but it’s
been floating in my head for years now anyhow) a really
Marxist poetic -- one based on the poems as matter, mate-
rial, product (& that of course is home base on my ball-
field) & wch will speak to the distribution, retribution,
etc. of literary works & not in the sappy way Kostelan-
etz’s bk does. Anyhow, give me an abstract(s) or some-
thing, ok? Seriously.
70  The Language Letters

Have 2 pp. of Lally things for #10,

if & when (if I dont get me some kinda job fucking soon,
Bruce. . .). I’m trying to hold off accepting anything,
but when I get things from folks like Coolidge (o & bet-
ter than in 8 even, the best of Clark, save for Latter30
wch is my fave of his post Space work. . . . I dont know
if it will be in AMOUNT or not, but I hope so.

Lazarchuk
may drop by here tomorrow, he’s going to a wedding up in
Cotati (where Gitin was living until last Fall). Grenier
shld just be getting back to NH now -- he stayed in the
country almost all the time he was here -- dont worry if
you dont hear from him for a while -- he really is neu-
rotic, o more than just that, & mail for him is hard.

Films
I cld get into someday, if I ever have the time & $ to
do it right, there are free films occasionally around &
some cheap things, but SF lacks the focus of a campus that
Berkeley has -- tho it makes up for it in many ways -- lots
of poetry readings of late (a big Duncan event last Tues-
day, his Romeo & Juliet lecture wch cld yet turn into a bk
-- lots of focusing on language, language speaking to us as
the world does; Kyger in 2 wks for free, both of these for
free in fact, here in SF -- a bad Patchen memorial & what
appears to be a bad UFWOC benefit next Friday). Why tho do
you always analogize yrself w/ art(s) of the ’30s? Welles
& German Expressionism are fine, never my favorites even of
their periods & genres but gosh gosh gosh.

Good Luck w/ BTable competition -- I’ve been wondering

whether or not to send him one, not for the contest, but

30. Barrett Watten refers to Coolidge’s long prose work as “Later Prose” in Stations #5: A
Symposium on Clark Coolidge, ed. Ron Silliman (Milwaukee: Membrane Press, 1978). This
work was published in 2012, when Fence Books brought it out under the title A Book Begin-
ning What and Ending Away.
 The Language Letters 71

just for the larger publishing list: it wld be abt 100 pp.
(maybe 200 poems). Dont think I qualify for the contest &
wld hate an intro, esp. a Dudley Fitts imitation. But he’s
put out a lively little group so far, maybe in the spring
I shall.

Using the word “experimental” in relation to “norms” (wch

means, to other poets) makes some sense -- except that I’ve
never met a poet who wld agree wholly w/ any other poet as
to what those norms are, even in the general sense(s) . . .
for example, neither Olson nor Levertov ever show any use
for the work of the other, Denise I know & she wasnt fond
of Olson’s work period, while she loved that of Jim Harri-
son, hated Dorn -- too far out for her -- & Kelly, yet she
was the operating force that got Zukofsky’s short poems
into print (ALL, that is) -- I know poets who see mod-
ern poetry as stemming from Stein from Stevens from Auden
(Frank O’Hara thot that!) from Jack Spicer from Steve Jonas
from you name it -- so I distrust the idea of “norms” as
being terribly useful -- lots, perhaps most, of readers of
poems these days wld assume Eshleman to be very experimen-
tal & you call him a “norm” (that yr perception is more to
the pt is, in this context, not the pt). & I dont see the
pt of describing poems externally, ya know? (this is the
problem w/ Grenier’s phrase “non-referential formalism,”
negatively defines it off of other poems).

I’m sorry if I was oblique in spots in commenting on yr

poems -- I rush sometimes, am rushed, now even, & it’s
easier to “refer” than to go into long things, tho sloppy
(& obscure in spots, but then I am obscure in spots).
My hassle w/ the foreign words was that my response was
non-linguistic. If I’d had a mag that ran to 100 pp. one
or more times a year, then I probably wld’ve gone for the
French poems. As to calling anthropological language “chi-
chi,” just count the # of times they show up in yr usual
Caterpillar issue, or Coyote’s Journal, or the writing
supplements to the Georgia Straight . . . & I dont even
72  The Language Letters

like Gary Snyder!

You are exactly on target w/ yr comment abt “ratta” & THE

NARR having similar problems in their organization. I’m
aware of that & it does bother me. Coolidge is inorganic
(such a woid to use in this context), but he’s not dis­
ordered.

I know it wasnt clear as to what I meant abt changing the

format of Tottel’s -- it’s not too clear over here either
-- I guess what I mean is I do not know whether or not I
want to do 3 single person issues w/ a fourth larger one
(maybe 50 pp.), drop the single person #s altogether, or
what. I think that by #10, most people will have gotten “the
point,” so how to grow on that basis is the question. Meyer
is to be #9 (O, he just sent a brand new thing, not for T
tho I may try to talk him into it, almost a historical joke
-- his idea of humor -- a sequence of short poems, showing
the evolution from the Kellyesque poem to the Tottel’s-ish
poem; he’s one of the few prodigiously talented guys I’ve
ever known & it looks like he’s “coming around” wch pleases
me GREATLY (good to know that a lot of people whom I respect
are responding as positively to it all)).

The scene out here is funny; it’s true that there are lots
of people around (I can see Thom Gunn’s place from here,
big fucking deal), but talk, w/ one or 2 exceptions, tends
to be casual, so less is sd in some ways than in letters
(indeed I have more contact w/ DiPalma, Meyer, yrself,
Coolidge of late than I do w/ most of the locals save
maybe Melnick & Bromige). Yeah, do send the BUFFALO STAMPS
2, never have seen it & I dont know Thorpe well enough to
ask -- everybody who knows him says he’s a “crazy,” he’s
had a lot of work in Clear Creek (so have Clark, Rothen-
berg, Codrescu, Bly) &, curiously, is one of those whom
Kelly mentions in that list of “other good poets” in the
back of CONTROVERSY OF POETS.

Did I send you Gitin’s address: 1325 Rutledge, Apt 1,

 The Language Letters 73

Madison, WI 53703?

Dont know why Cat 17 was poorly printed. Clayton’s not

speaking to me these days (sigh).

The comments on #8 were almost all on the issue as a

whole (this is a total turnaround of previous issues,
wch is odd but a sign of its strength). The only single
comments I’ve gotten have been on my work or on things
wch people specifically did not like (you havent come
up in that context, by the way). So much for the copious
detail. I’m not planning anything until I have a job. So
I dont know abt those single number issues. This is repe-
tition I think.

Yr right that THIS 2 is into another area than 0-9 was,

tho I think it is an infinitely better mag, its focus is
much more to the point, those things wch I feel of most
value. Bob doesnt dig Rothenberg very much, or any of
that intermedia. I think that a broader ground is more
useful & a lot of the Iowa overlap wch gets into This
just passes me by (how come you didnt comment on the
works of Rae Armantrout, one of my favorite poets tho
of a conservative idiom, & Gitin?). I’m adding Higgins
& Perrault to the Tottel’s mailing list w/ the next #,
maybe that’ll generate something. I think that “M IS
FOR MAHONEY” is a genuine classic; & like most of Gre-
nier’s poems (the cpl I dont like look like exercises,
such as “the brother is Italian” one therein;31 the caps
seem to me clearly used as the poems are ones of a par-
ticular volume, static & loud: “JOE JOE” is my 2nd
favorite. Yr right abt Eigner. If yr into “poems close to
other arts” look at the mag AVALANCHE (lots of Acconci,
etc.), something DiPalma turned me onto, tho I remain
more or less unmoved by it.
Yr comments on CROW are, generally, right to my mind (you

31. Two poems from Grenier appeared in This 2: “MARRIED HIM / BECAUSE HIS
MOTHER / WAS A TADPOLE” and “MARRIED HIM / BECAUSE HIS BROTHER / WAS
ITALIAN.”
74  The Language Letters

like those I think best, generally). I think you & Preston

have exactly opposite value systems, his last letter went
through my poems, he pointing to exactly those you dont &
vice versa. I like the plainness of his work -- it’s not a
lack of imagination, but a choice to use pastels (Eigner’s
influence & Grenier’s); he’s really a NY oriented poet,
but does much that falls into the area that I’m into. He
carries that anti-urgent tone to a pt that I wld suspect
drives you up the wall a bit. You might do the same to
him, dunno. (He aint far from you, you know, I gave you
his old address once, his new one is 28 Billingham St,
Somerville. If you want to get to know some people who are
writing, you have to go out & meet them, you know -- look
him up -- or drop in on Irby who teaches in the English
Dept at Tufts; he’s a good guy to talk to, used to live
near me in Berkeley.

The circulation of Tottel’s is abt 80. But the 80 cur-

rently includes Bromige Grenier Irby Levertov Eshleman
Kelly Taggart Schwerner Carroll Rothenberg Coolidge Oppen
Mac Low Clark Warsh Creeley Berkson Simic MacAdams Kissam
Veitch Kyger Enslin Codrescu Palmer Fagin Duncan Quasha
Bronk Gerber Rakosi Wakoski Wieners Zukofsky & Waldman as
well as lots of the younger unknownier guys, so it gets a
lot more real circulation than it wld if I, say, were to
print 500 copies & put them in the stores. It keeps grow-
ing slowly & will probably hit 100 before #11 roles in.

OCCIDENT IS A HORRIBLE MAG. It’s the campus rag at Berke-

ley & is responsible for me meeting Melnick & McAleavey,
so I shldnt complain, but if you send them yr good work,
you’ll just get it right back. The poem you saw was orig-
inally excepted (omigod, did I write that? illiterate!)
accepted by STONY BROOK before it folded. I do not, I
heartily do not recommend them.

Of all yr comments on my work your ones on “paleo/ator”

 The Language Letters 75

seem to me the most directly connected w/ current concerns

over here. Hmmm. Will have to think abt them.

As to organic: ---
--- ----
--- is not more ---
---- organic than ---

organic means, I take it, built out of the necessity of

the organ at hand. In a poem where it is assumed that
the words are a form of speech (early Creeley, Duncan
etc.), then organic means scoring the page for the voice;
or if it is a matter of a narrative as well, then also
to clarify the meanings of the narrated world. But when
the words do not connect (& overlapping aint connecting,
remember?) then there is no such inner necessity. This is
where Coolidge’s inorganic approach has proven successful,
tho frustrating to me. I used many “found” techniques in
that poem, as the means to build stanzas & all the longer
lines, cut-up techniques more or less, the forms of mean-
ing that filter thru were/are accidental, some I thot nice
secondary benefits, others pointed out the limits of the
technique. I still have to sort all of those things out
-- I’ve done some newer things using found techniques plus
chance ones, tho I’m certainly not committed to either.
The whole problem of vocabularies is right now the one
that interests me most directly. Then the one of build-
ing. There, in those two areas, are the decisions I have
to come up w/ in my own work & havent yet. Coolidge’s
recent work -- This 2, Tottel’s 8, Tottel’s 10, especially
from the sequences “Stone Ground” & “A B,” are moving into
areas that I doubt I’d ever find myself going in (tho I
can see some uses, mostly phonetic, for the long line).

The prose thing I’ve done or rather I’ve promised to do

for Ray is sitting around in scraps right behind this
machine -- it’s not anywhere yet.
If & when THE NARR is published, it will be whole -- wld
76  The Language Letters

not print in a fragment.

Aint got copies of anything right now, wish I did actually

(my prose is eminently available to the mind & as eas-
ily forgotten -- I’ve never pub’d fiction, since I dont
believe in it as a mode in writing, my last thing was a
wee note, a little cold & pompous in the Chicago Review to
cover that 65 pp. anthology Melnick & I did -- did you see
that? summer ’70 -- & earlier, a review of a few pages of
several bks of Paul Blackburn’s in the last # of EL CORNO
before the Federales came down so hard on it. Plus some
mediocre reviews for the Berkeley campus paper (my life as
a journalist!) quick dittys tossed off for the frosh folks
-- on Corman, Steve Reich’s music, a performance of Mer-
chant of Venice etc.

Yes, let me know of some good mags. Just abt all the east-
ern mags never get here (& vice versa), so, for example,
I have never seen a single copy of THE WORLD. I dont send
out very often -- 6 times a year or less -- as a fair por-
tion of my work is taken up by requests (Tuatara, This,
Rain are all regulars in that sense, as is Occident tho I
doubt if I’d answer them at this pt). But I wld dig turn-
ing onto a few mags that are good (it’s the only way to
guarantee that you’ll be read by anyone -- the other con-
tributors will read you). How’s Adventures in Poetry, wch
is one that Coolidge recommends?

Ok, gonna make dinner, phone my dear mother, maybe (just)

write!

Ron

————

9. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews (3/12/72), excerpt

 The Language Letters 77

Good to hear from you, Bruce,

I thot maybe you were mad or had been hit by a truck.

[. . . .]

My complaint w/ Kostelanetz’s critique is that it’s shoddy,

shallow & lacking in any really new suggestions. Take the
final chapter, coyly named “What is to be done?” (quote
Lenin as a response? radical chic as the man wld say, tho
I imagine that the revolutionary-by-association technique
will (fortunately) fail as most of my peers never read
comrade Ulyanov (unfortunately). Anyway, the bulk of this
his big finale chapter is simply a description of the lit-
tle mag distribution circuit as it exists today (& w/ some
very real errors of the most insidious kind -- like call-
ing BOOK PEOPLE a commune, wch wld make Chase Manhattan a
free school I guess -- all of his suggestions are already
tried & mostly failed techniques: there is still no alter-
native to good printing & national distribution at reason-
able rates). & I really think that the attitude that “it is
better that university money go to writers than elsewhere”
is a crock of shit, frankly. To begin w/, 80% of the good
writers in the US cannot get gigs w/ universities (Coolidge
for example, Giorno, MacAdams, Ronald Johnson) until they
are in their 40s or else have the degrees (a la Bob).

[. . . .]

Yr own analysis of the need for poets not to worry much

abt publication + the use of existing pig media sources
seems to me more or less correct -- not an ideal tho. I’m
almost totally freaked at this pt by the idea of “editing”
wch is one reason why doing single # issues of Tottel’s
may make more sense to me in the future -- tho that’s mak-
ing an assumption I’m not making at this pt -- choose the
person & let them do it w/out the tampering involved w/
any collective effort. (One reason why I chose TOTTEL’S
as the title was that Richard Tottel was such an asshole
78  The Language Letters

when it came to this -- altering the meter of Wyat’s poems

to smooth the scansion etc. -- the first real bad edi-
tor; calling attention -- however obliquely -- to that is
one step towards eliminating it. I’ve been asked (honest
to god) to cut commas from my poems by editors, or sin-
gle lines, adjectives, you name it! That is why I more or
less stopped trusting any mag whose contributors weren’t
totally into “my thing,” why I cut my submissions down by
abt 90%. I mean that crap continues ever onward.

[. . . .]

As to vocabs & building -- at this pt, I’m less sure of my

self than I was a month or 2 months ago. Have been trying
lots of different things & havent seen clearly yet where
they’re leading me, the necessary prelim to any critical
expression. Among my projects for the immediate future is
to read a few articles on the linguistic effects of apha-
sia (a number of my minimal things have already been the
result of an early look-see at this branch of psychol-
ogy/special-education theory). Yr comments re organic vs
inorganic are worth considering, that is, they pinpoint
spots I’ve been aware of as weak in my own thot, or areas
as yet undeveloped or undefined. Unless the sound/space
score is based on a theory of poetry as music (? Bunting?)
or of voice (?), then the rationale for yr position seems
arbitrary -- tho given the right conditions, one that wld
work. I agree that 6666
6666
6666 is a sign of a pre-set configura-
tion, tho as Albers & Stella in one field & Riley & Reich
in another have all shown, that can be a vital/exciting
means of reaching other dimensions than wld be available
to a de Kooning (consider, for example, the freedom in
color that Albers has compared to that of Rothko, a much
more thorough investigation of that dimension was possi-
ble to him simply through the use of hard-edge & acrylic
surface). The problem w/ the more “organic” sense of scor-
ing (via space as indicator of sound) is that such a score
demands a particular organizing principle -- speech, music
 The Language Letters 79

or whatever -- or else it comes off flat (like what Eigner

says of his own work in Controversy of Poets, a very true
problem extant in his work, even the best of it); & those
principles (systems) seem to me to be inimical to my ends
at this pt. Not that I would ignore them. But I’m trying to
get to a pt where the words carry the tension that occurs
in the recognition of any new element in the environment
-- that instant of “cogito” before the ergo sum; a sys-
tem so structured creates some form of predictability (not
a priori a negative effect, however). Anyway, these sound
structures do give one large possible sense of building,
but define the area of connections too strongly for me -- I
find myself getting the sense of the sound & not the agree-
ment/disagreement between the other levels of the words.
Does that make sense? It does to me, but at this level of
perspective it’s hard to tell how it wld look to another
person -- no distance. One of the problems that Narr pre-
sented to me was submerging the individual elements into a
structure as large as that, losing that discreteness, often
to speech-like rhythms. It is that area of the poem that
makes me least happy right now; whereas I was able to get
found/Burroughs/cut sections that came over to me as in
a mode kin to Ariel’s speech in The Tempest (o, that ego)
or poor Tom in Lear: “Edgar I nothing am,” etc. (that’s
the best line in Shakespeare incidentally -- each word is
essentially the identity of the speaker, each a little
closer to the inner self -- a subconscious grammar: “Edgar
I nothing am” -- real pre-Stein Stein there). I’ve been
using elements of visual tension & trying on repetition of
late, to no real conclusions as yet. The thing I’m enclos-
ing is an example of disjointing semantic levels & a found
vocabulary.

This was supposed to be a note. Time for bed. Ciao. Write

soon.

Ron
80  The Language Letters

————

10. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman (3/21/72)

Dear Ron pardon the absence (February i got a little car-

ried away being “conscientious”, starting, ahead, off
right in the semester -- but i wasnt mad or hit by a
truck, just sort of preoccupied or et al.).

Sorry about yr flu (pausing here for a minute to empathize

in silence so i wont just be making a perfunctory remark).
Hope a job comes through: are you spending the days mostly
hiking around for employment or do you get to enjoy at all
the life of un-employment (last year i was off the whole
time, Ellen working -- but i wish i had the year now when
i could really make something of it).

My writing has been not even spurt-like: WestWest the last

real sport after “splinters him” & then a 5 pager simi-
lar to “splinters him” a week ago & some collabs w/ Bill
Zavatsky & 12 pages w/ Lally (which i just sent to Grenier
-- am enclosing a xerox i think): it looks as though i’ll
get almost no more written until the 1st of June except
these little gibbets, since i’ve got so much schoolwork
(& relax from it by watching a lot of movies & an occa-
sional letter: the movies this last month have really
opened me up to some things -- lately Renoir’s Rules of
the Game, Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller (for the 2nd time
-- the male point of view fairly oppressively present, as
Beatty’s onion peels himself open layer by layer & whim-
pers, as we all need to, at the end (or almost at the
end, for the finale has to be a macho performance) & then
today part 1 of Hour of the Furnaces the Argentinian film
on neo-­
colonialism: moving & comprehensive.

Anyhow, since there’s little “news” (other than these

things, & the reestablishment of communications w/
Zavatsky, who’s visiting w/ his Ms. in a week or so --
never met him -- RRogers should be “out” at that time)
 The Language Letters 81

-- (Ghost Dance 13 w/ 2 things by me, one from “Brick

Brae,” the other a cut-up called “Policy Making” -- saw
it at the library but dont have a copy -- also been
co-translating a 6 part Denis Roche wery veird fragmented
nonsense poem from Tel Quel w/ a non-poet best friend from
college (Johns Hopkins, big Bmore) -- got my own copy of
Shaking the Pumpkin (& read the recent Alcheringa): would
like to do some “workings” from the anthropological early
years books gathering Harvard Library dust, maybe this
summer: this seems like something that would be helpful --
got my fan belt fixed -- grad students & teaching fellows
at Harvard are preparing to go on strike (after having had
our funds drastically cut -- 2 of our fish died -- great
weather -- doing a lot of reading but nothing dramati-
cally recommendable after the Carl Boggs article (tho, we
read an issue of The Furies, radical lesbian paper from DC
which is really interesting) -- read Telephone #5: terri-
ble stuff w/ the scant exception of Scheldahl (sp), Berk-
son, & a great 2 p. Veitch piece, otherwise real sub-NYC
drivel (w/ all the favorites -- ho -- Fagin, a dreadful
Clark-MacAdams collab, etc. etc.: all that can be said for
the mag is its circulation & the fact that those that get
it probly read it (i have 3 things in #6, so, . . . . .).

With my Budweiser, trusty by my side, & the student US

Govt ballpoint, Ron, i always enjoy writing to you -- when
you’re talking about Faville & cast off “has a mind,” i
realize immediatement that this cannot be assumed, before-
hand -- so, a toast to our correspondence!

I was about to say that since little “news” is hereabouts,

(& since i said a lot last time about various & sundry)
i’ll just pick up yr letter & see where the wind blows
(sequentially of course).

Hard to GET what you say bout Grenier tho it intrigues

(also, absence of any perspective since the mag scene
i’ve never seen from inside, nor talked much of w/ any-
one but just playing it clumsily (& so far overly-luckily
82  The Language Letters

i guess) by ear -- i agree about ours being overlapping

concerns (BG & moi) & i sent him some more things [BA
inserts: not so many] (the 40 pages he got not in one
imposing swoop but in clumps over several months & 13 p.
were collabs -- but i didnt feel at all aggressive about
deluging him, however untactful or whatever it is, since
i’ve got tons of stuff, have sufficient trouble decid-
ing what i like best (setting up a hierarchy, etc.) &
have no confidence at all in being able to predict his
response, hence → a 40 p. ton of poems (in half a dozen
basic styles, too). If he’s only submitted 3 or 4 times
in 12 years (12 years -- lord -- how old is he), all well
& good, but that must reflect either an uncompromising
style or a certain perception about what has a chance of
getting published or those 5 or 6 books you say he’s got
of Space size being unimpressive to him -- & not just
modesty, or why would he start a magazine, in the pro-
cess giving himself fairly extensive prominence, etc.
etc. But as you say, no one’s resolved the problems of
ambition & publication yet & certainly not me (cause if
my submissions really started to get accepted, i.e., suc-
cess, i’m sure i’d acquire a Kuzma-rep just for the fact
of it -- as tho there was no way, heads you lose, tails
you lose, etc.). Not to mention the omnipresent (& sour-
ing) grapes. I do enjoy his work, even if more for the
concept & potential of it, but find it baffling for you
to say you “dont know anyone whose work excites me nearly
as much” -- owell. Certainly i dont dismiss him -- but,
unless it would seem too prying or whatever, i’d be able
to see this tie-up better if you did go into some of the
personal reasons sometime (about Bob).

McAleavey/WestWest: he sent me a nice note saying he’d

pass it around. I helped Mike put together the ms. he sent
em, but somehow i figured they wouldnt (& didnt) like
it. Mike’s background is too close to the street, gangs,
blacks, lyricism, sentimental perceptive stuff w/ not a
lot of the Iowaish irony & literary structuring that, say,
DiPalma thrives upon -- very direct feelings (tho, not
 The Language Letters 83

what is known as “direct statement”) -- his new “Satisfac-

tion” (about 45 pp. which i bracketed out of a big book
of stuff from ’71) is really fine: notational, w/ words &
phrases cut out of the middle of longer poems, fragments,
autobiographies, etc.: I think he’s going to send it to
them. Hope so, it’s a very fine “voice.”

Lazarchuk -- is he planning on doing another BS [Blue

Suede Shoes]. Did you see #1 (w/ 13 pages of yrs truly,
including “Susan 1,” my “1st poem,” at least 1st that i
typed up -- from early in 1969 -- as well as cut-ups &
some Coolidgeish things -- he said he had 15 extra copies
he was sending me but never did -- if he’s doing another
issue, you really ought to give him some things.

No, i havent seen the new DiPalma things. Be interested to

know how your correspondence is coming along & what you
think of him. From what Mike’s told me he sounds very ner-
vous & a little selfish-opportunistic, but i’ve never had
any contact w/ him (Mike wrote him a scorching personal
letter & hasnt heard back from him). Saw his recent collab
book w/ Darrell Gray which was “uniquely lame” -- but i’ve
liked some of his poems in the innumerable chapbooks & a
good half of what was in #8. The power thing has distorted
his friendship w/ Michael somewhat & so i’ve never made any
contact w/ him, tho it would’ve been a logical thing to do
-- i felt it’d be somehow dishonest since the respect he
demands would’ve been artificial on this side, etc. etc.
(it’s very involved & probably explosive, so. . . . .).

Magdoff: not a bad book in terms of info, but a little

deck-stacked i think (very striking manipulation of evi-
dence & quotes throughout) -- also, shit, raw materials
just arent that important -- what is decisive is a broader
class interest in hegemony & of beating back the barba-
rous 3rd world threats that far transcends their cost/ben-
efit analysis importance. The Magdoff/Sweezy line fails on
4 levels: 1) this one [BA inserts arrow to “cost/­
benefit
analysis”] 2) overstresses the unity of the ruling class
84  The Language Letters

which, 1st off, is a top managerial rather than an owner

class and is not united -- there are decisive cleavages
in the bourgeoisie & they are far from being a “class for
itself” -- historically this has been a differentiating
characteristic of the American corporate class, 3) they
impose a rational actor model on the govt. policy makers,
which does not apply often & 4) they assume but never lay
bare the character of the corporate-govt. linkage, but
merely assume it (which is decisive because of #2). So,
they’re a little slippery for me, however much they’re on
the right track. As for more reading or getting a clear
picture of the whole, the best single thing is a book, just
out, The Capitalist System by Edwards/Weisskopf etc. i
think -- a marvelous issue-oriented neo (i.e., not blind)
Marxist anthology, many of the articles in which are real
landmarks & many others perfect concise introductions.

What do you do w/ the prison system? (You know, we really

ought to be a little more explicit about personal details,
i think it’d help lay a “friendly framework.”)

Marxist poetic -- keep me informed. Yr notes seemed

intriguing (there’s an ad for a new hardback on Marxist
literary criticism in the NY Review, might be decent).
Litcrit i know, truly, nothing of, but if there’s anything
there worth reading (Ong, etc.) include, from the head-
top, a quick list. Have you ever read Lukacs, which never,
’cept the ’23 H-CC [History and Class Consciousness] clas-
sic, seemed appealing tho a social theory friend said i
ought to read his litcrit (realism in the novel, etc.) --
unconvinced.

Kostelanetz: i concede (tho, i’m not sure it’s unfortunate

our peers dont read Lenin, at least after reading the anar-
chist critique -- there was a run, rather disconcerting,
on Stalin books this summer in DC). Writers in universi-
ties, agree again & it is touchy about the purpose of uni-
versities (read Gintis’ brilliant beyond peer article in
Monthly Review on schools i think in January ’72). What was
 The Language Letters 85

the Ed Sanders suppression? And as for answers, we remain

in the dark & yr full page on the problem was incredibly
much appreciated (a hell of a lot of professional issues in
poetry i miss by not knowing people -- which i realize is a
matter of my own choice). What you say about there being no
alternative to good printing & nat’l distribution at rea-
sonable rates counterpoints my non-ideal of hibernation.
As for “editing” [BA inserts: (looking at it from here)]
-- a lot of people have suggested i should start a magazine
(tho they meant it as a way of “succeeding”) & it seemed
like a good way to get people i like in more print, but
of course 1) doing an open mag has too many headaches for
the amount of time i could probly ever devote to it (since
i’m still creakily trying to hold onto a lot of other
interests, friends, another profession, blah blah blah)
-- also i dont like reading that much poetry anyhow & yet
2) the alternative (which is the alternative for Tottel’s
expressed in yr interest in more single # issues) never
appealed -- i.e., a closed mag because it went against the
grain of my fond memories of getting poems taken by strang-
ers which i thought were aimed in new directions, etc. &
also because, unlike the place you’ve gotten yrself in over
the years, i could never feel like i knew enuf people to
make it comprehensive enuf -- & now there’s 3) i’ve gotten
less interested in most poetry i see so i have no confi-
dence that i could make a mag of poems that grabbed me, 4)
a lot of people i’d want to print dont in any way need the
extra attention & 5), which i see from DiPalma’s Doones & a
lot of other places, mags are always crapped up by the edi-
tor feeling the need to put in his friends, people who’ve
helped him in the past & people who might be able to help
him in the future. So . . . . , i’ve never started a mag.
Though i think by the end of ’72 i’ll start doing some
mimeo books à la Adventures in Poetry & sending em to maybe
a hundred people -- 1st things i’d want to do would be the
recent collabs w/ Michael, some of my own -- & a book of
your stuff if you might be open to it. But this may be just
a pipe dream (also, i probly couldnt just have the guy pick
his own poems since i’m so damn persnicity (sp).
86  The Language Letters

Thanks for the info about yr ms.: -- made a few clouds

vanish in my mind about what work you have lying around
as well as what y’re doing: (be intrigued to see any of
yr work from before Crow if you think any of it holds up
-- since then, if i have it correct, the dominant modes
have been 1) like in Chicago Review (dimly recalled)
& This 2, -- are these the “sentence/voice” poems --
then 2) the minimals & 3) the more Coolidgeish pieces
à la Tottel’s 8 & THE NARR. Is that an accurate piec-
ing together? Also, how representative is that poem in
CAT 8/9 which i think exploited certain possibilities
which at least someone else might’ve picked up on. As
for getting a ms. published: ugh -- especially if even
the “heavies” are up-filled (for even if their taste is
amiss, a lot of em do fine printing & as you said, once
you’re reaching 100 people you know of & their, say,
100 friends, the only place to head is toward a several
thousand copy nat’l distribution which your work much
deserves (says this one person) but which it aint likely
to get. This true even if you’re “more active w/ the
mags” because A) unlike the old halcyon days (as the fly-
leaf list of publications on Crow indicates) you’re into
a very arcane bundle of styles for which almost no mags
exist & certainly no mags of big names that’d help you w/
the established places, B) mags that are “available” are
perhaps decent ways of getting some work out to another
couple hundred people & of making contact w/ some (these
are the values i’ve found at least) but their quality
is no more than questionable & C) even furious publica-
tion in these available mags leads nowhere. Has Atheneum
swooped down on Kuzma? Has Harper & Row picked up on Paul
Violi (or me or etc. etc.). My only landmark (the Carroll
anthol.) came only from my “NYC style” poems (just like
John Martin might’ve welcomed you had you stayed put or
just like someone else might go for DiPalma as long as
he keeps up his “Iowa2” poems (= Iowa1 + a dash of Ash-
bery) & not be too “strident” (i.e., Coolidgeish), etc.
etc. The only chance would i think be if you had a ware-
house full of old more conservative work which you still
 The Language Letters 87

liked, & could send out: then, after xyz # of acceptances

of this kind of work, someone might be willing to try a
more adventurous ms. This, basically, is what i’ve been
doing: partly because i do have lots of older stuff,
(like the one in BS 1 or in Guabi, etc.) which i think
points in directions that i’d like people to be aware
of (e.g. not just in one direction which i’ve since fol-
lowed up on & improved upon -- in other words, this work
is not “transitional” in the way you said some of Crow,
etc. was) -- so, i’ve been sending these things out, to
let people see it, to make & keep contact w/ people that
couldnt get into things of mine like “voya” & “piec,” or
“ratta,” to possibly keep up some kind of momentum, to
lay a path (as well as for all the silly little grati-
fication i still get when i get a poem published, owell
. . .) -- but since you’re not still working, as i am,
in these more conventional arenas, i dont know what gains
you could cull from submissions, except to get yr stuff
in some NYC places (which i really think would be a good
welcome idea but wont land you any contracts. The only
thing that might be of help on that score would be if you
got something really exciting in The Paris Review (which
i think gave Coolidge a big quantum jump in recognition
prior to Carroll & Space & more so than the Lines & Angel
Hair Books -- have you ever sent Clark any poems?) But,
i’ll keep my ears to the ground case i hear anythin.

Stray thot: sometimes i get in a goofy mood & wish i could

start w/ O’Hara fresh (& Hollo, Raworth, etc.) & do the
NYC style proud -- but, . . . .

I’ll send Faville some poems (was really startled him say-
ing “slick but good” (!)). I still have trouble realizing
that some poets i’ve never heard of are going to actually
know who i am from seeing my work: altho that’s of course
the whole purpose it still blows mah-mynde. Read his
things in This 1 (Grenier taught at Berkeley?? -- i thot
he was at Iowa) -- now, i’m eating my Special K: morning.
88  The Language Letters

You made yrself clear to me about the organic/inorganic

thing -- tho a poem that has a structure of sounds &
silence when being read (& for me that is true for almost
all except the concrete ones) can be “organically” set up
so that its scoring parallels that structure [BA inserts,
in parentheses, a sketch of five non-justified lines of
varying lengths], it neednt. Dont know about Eigner think-
ing his work is flat: the excitement i get in reading his
recent poems is the way the structure of sounds & silence
(in syntax) comes through his style of scoring: it’s per-
fect, i think: which means an almost paralleling, leav-
ing some extra tension as well as a sense of revelation.
If the paralleling were not done so deftly it would seem
either flat or manipulative (the 2 dangers) and 3rd, a
disadvantage: when you score it to reveal one set of rela-
tionships (that of space/sound), other networks are lost
(Rothko vs Stella, as you say). So, there is something to
the preset configuration (in that it allows for a closer
recognition of other new environmental elements) but it
may come off stiff-flat, the words carrying the tension
of discovery may need to be more carefully located (if
not scored parallel to their sound) if this tension is to
avoid being lost when the individual elements are sub-
merged in the illusion of syntax (my problem w/ Coolidge)
& as you said about Narr: discreteness lost to speech-like
rhythms (which are not the rhythms of revelation i get in
Eigner). Visual tension might help (i like it in Eigner
& miss it in Coolidge). So, i guess i’ve been happier w/
Eigner & seen more problems w/ Coolidge, on this question
-- tho yr discussion makes the spectrum clear.

Also, i’m trying to work out a classificatory scheme on 3 vec-

tors: meaningfulness/referential-ness/fragmentation because
it seems to best differentiate the people we’re talkin’ bout.
More on that later & as you said, “this was supposed to be a
note” -- but i really enjoy writing to you, so

goombye,

Bruce
 The Language Letters 89

————

11. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews (3/27/72), excerpt

Well, this IS a note (not so much short as quickly writ-

ten, or so the intention goes, so pardon flaws, etc.),
hello hello, good to hear back, today’s a fine fine day,
the Soledad Brothers being acquitted this morning on
their murder rap (oh, that case has done more to politi-
cize prisoners & educate the public abt prisons than any
other -- George Jackson’s writings, the Angela Davis case,
the Marin Courthouse shootout, the San Quentin 6 case,
Ruchell Magee’s case, & of course Jackson’s assassination,
all stem from this same case ((from, in fact, an origin
that should justly be seen as that pt when Jackson first
got thrown in the hole, i.e., the segregation unit or AC
(adjustment center), for trying to integrate the tv room
in the Chino prison almost a decade ago)) -- at a cost of
at least 12 lives) anyway, it makes me very giddy excited,
it’s one of THE basic steps we have needed to take &
badly.

[. . . .]

Woof! That was a long day (Sunday now) -- finisht the

dread thesis Friday A.M., did some writing (poems & a
review of Tom Clark’s NEIL YOUNG), went to Berkeley,
helped our food conspiracy divide up the bi-monthly dry
goods order, bought Bookchin’s book out of curiousity (oi
-- dat’s not right). Just treated myself to a good meal &
one of the “other people’s” Buds, so look at me now and
here I am, & all that. 16th Century recorder music of
France on in here, the Grateful Dead emanating from some
other place, the tv on but nobody watching it (that’s how
it is around here).

You didnt include the 12 page Xerox you

mentioned in yr note -- the Lally collabs -- too bad, do
90  The Language Letters

so. Beyond those books I mentioned on the other page & a

narrow poster (enclosed) wch I picked up several copies
of, there’s not been much to read that I’d care to. The
World 25 has a poem of Kuzma’s in it, . . . well, that
says plenty (sigh).

One of my roommates in Oakland was an

Argentine math Ph.D. candidate who was a fanatic for HOUR
OF THE FURNACES, but I never found myself w/ the time to
see it. Lordy, outside of a Kuchar flick & then The Mouse
That Roared on tv, I’ve no films at all this year --
really unlike me. When I was a mailman (’66 & ’67) I spent
all my $ on books, films, restaurants -- had $13 saved up
when I finally quit (story of my life -- tho it really was
that period that gave me my fullest period of reading into
US verse).

Speaking of wch (2 digressions): see if yr

library has a copy of Others: An Anthology of the New
Verse, pub’d by Knopf in 1917. If so, get it out & look at
the following 2 poems: Alfred Kreymborg’s “Berceuse Ari-
ettes” (p. 60) & Walter Conrad Arensberg’s ING (p. 9). Yes-
sir, ING! Anyway, heres a weird pair of pieces worth look-
ing into. Stein influence at its first burst.

Kreymborg is
somebody whom WCW praises on occasion highly & Duncan’s
mentioned (in The H.D. Book) Arensberg in the same breath
as Stein. (I asked DiPalma to look Kreymborg up, as Berke-
ley’s library -- biggest west of Chicago -- had not much, &
he came up w/ both of these gems).

In the same vein I saw

a copy of Rose Demonics on sale (used) in Moe’s in Berke-
ley, looked thru it, still think there’s less than 10
pages there. In the same vein again, a friend tells me
that Grande Ronde Review thinks there’s less than 10
pages in mine too -- that I were bumrapped & badmouthed
out of the “here’s more avant-garde bullshit & do you
 The Language Letters 91

call that poetry” genre. Sigh. & it’s such a timid book
too. . . .

Grenier’s 31 I think, maybe a year or 2 younger. Yeah,

he is uncompromising in his style, essentially. If you
look into DUSK ROAD GAMES (not a good book), you will
see him moving gradually to a spot where, at the end, a
heavy heavy Stein/Zukofsky influence is coming in, came
in, then gradually the poems getting pared down to their
size now (when I met him he was just getting into mini-
mal things, not fully there yet). It’s true as you say
that he does use This to get his own work out, but there
is the key consideration (for him) that he doesnt have to
ASK anybody else to publish it, if you know what I mean.
Re Ithaca House: they just accepted a book of Rochelle
Nameroff’s, another of Tottel’s contributors.

As to what I think of DiPalma, well he is (to use his own

words) Faustian, but he’s almost unbelievably bright (in
his letters anyhow), sees the issues in such poetry as
ours instantly & w/ insights that I myself have been able
to use. One way to give you an idea of where he is these
days wld be to type some stuff up, tho the very best is
not easy to type at all, harder than yours -- so I’ll
include a big bunch of recent things I have.

OK, get that DiPalma stuff back & write before it’s summer
vacatation, ok??????

Ron

————
92  The Language Letters

12. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman (4/29/72)

Hello Ron --

in one month, the last of my four long papers plus two

final exams will be over & time: no longer to be quite as
scarce a commodity.

Let me try out some notions here (also i’m going to xerox
this & send it to Michael, so at least this frame of ref-
erence or confusion can get some feedback).

What this is/is 2 different sets of categories vectors

criteria -- both as a way of getting a grip on what
others & myself are doing, also to clarify goals.

Division One: poets (poems) divides into 3 parts

-- linguistic structures, evocative structures,
expressional structures: these are goals of the
poet.

1. Poets primarily interested in the poem as an expres-

sional structure:
(This whole 1st division is a division of inten-
tions-motives, albeit imputed from the outcome
-- in other words, the end-in-view: the act is not
treated purely behaviorally, from the outside as a
purely physical event, but also phenomenologically,
from the inside, as a structure of intended actions
& motivated choices: this is an aside, but it
points up a crucial debate in the philo. of social
science, which i’ve had to get involved with in my
schoolwork. Alfred Schutz the key figure.)

1. Poets primarily interested in the poem as an expres-

sional structure (or as a letting-loose structure of
expression)
This is the older conception: the poem as a set of
ideas, symbol systems (Thomas, Eliot, Empson): the
 The Language Letters 93

poem as a set of author-perceptions which he wants

to express (W. C. Williams & much of lill magazine
poetry): or the poem as a set of personal emo-
tions the poet wants to express (say, the Eshleman
notion, or the Beats, or much of Black poetry)
The “expression” here is relatively personal, indi-
vidualistic
2. Poets primarily interested in the poem as an evoc-
ative structure which is not a direct (straight-­
forward) personal expression
This is a lumpy category -- “oblique expression”
Would like to include the surrealists, soft-core
surrealists, deep-image neo surrealists, NYC
proto-­
surrealists, etc. as well as the shamanist-­
image-evocation poems in the Rothenberg antholo-
gies & Eigner & Coleman
Here i think the reader’s experience is not as
manipulated as in #1: emphasis is on the quality
of emotions received rather than given -- there’s
no message (of ideas, emotions, perceptions) to
“get across” -- more leeway perhaps
Often built on the image (which is, if done well,
inherently less straightforward from an individ-
ual pt. of view -- perhaps because it’s supposed
to, in Bly’s formulation, get down to a lower
brain, etc., collective of tribal unconscious)
or built on evocative fragments, like Eigner,
Elliott Coleman, Ashbery’s Tennis Court Oath, etc.
-- evocative in the sense of seeming close enuf
to personal experience or a concrete referred-
to-­
reality that these things are evoked for the
reader & it is not purely a linguistic experience

3. Poets primarily interested in the poem as a linguis-

tic structure
This is i think where Stein Coolidge you Grenier, etc.
(& some of Zukofsky, etc. etc.) are aimed i think
Lack of straightforward personal expression of emo-
tions, ideas, perceptions relating to outside
94  The Language Letters

(outside the poem) reality -- i.e., a rejection

of #1
The analogy w/ this rejection is music (classical
music) -- musical language isnt suited to this
direct expression. It is, however, suited to
either #2 or #3
In other words, when the musical language plays the
dominant role, it overwhelms the ability of the
composition to evoke any reality that is outside
itself; there is no referred-to-reality, in other
words -- This is probably most music (Bach, Scar-
latti . . . Carter, Berg, etc.)
Other classical music may have evocation more as a
goal, in which case the musical language may be
subordinated to, or placed in the services of,
evocative goals (Rachmaninoff, Tschaikovsky, Wag-
ner, Orff)
But if expression and evocation of things outside
are rejected, we’re close to #3 (in music or in
poetry)
The experience of the reader is neither drawn to the
author (as in #1) or to things outside the poem
(possible exception given to being drawn to the
meanings of separated words) as in #2, but is
riveted to the poem as a network of linguistic
matter = linguistic experience
I think we can also look upon these 3 as outcomes &
see what’s where
#1 “expressional” poems can employ elements of #2
“evocative” or #3 “linguistic,” and #2 poems can
use elements of #3 (i.e., most “great” poems
in the tradition are perhaps #1 poems w/ great
interest on the 2 & 3 levels) (i.e., Eigner &
Coleman can use #3 -- words as pure linguistic
experience -- at times, tho subordinated to evo-
cation)
 The Language Letters 95

Evocation is a kind of oblique expressionism --

as surrealism, Coleman, etc. makes clear --
so one could lump 1 & 2 together if what you
wanted was just to get a better handle on 3

So, personal reactions:

My own poems from start to finish (’69 to now) are

either #2 or #3 or somewhere in between.
My 1st 5 poems in spring ’69 were Olsonish-
#1 expression-idea poems (#1) but by the time i
= typed them up (April ’69 -- 2 weeks later) --
expression i’d read Ashbery & a few others & was excited
by fragmentation & the use of single or grouped
#2 words, so i injected so much of these two ele-
= ments (which lean toward #3) into a basically #1
evocation (expressional) poem that it ended up pure #2!
(i.e., the #3 elements served merely to heighten
#3 the evocative non-expressional sense of it!)
= So since then, i’ve done a lot of evocative things
linguistic (starting out w/ fragmented things, then influ-
enced by the image & surrealism -- up to Nitric
Lateral Prayer & then by Eigner, who seems to
achieve evocation by means of the very things i’d
been excited by w/ Coleman & then w/ the purer #3
poets: i.e., single words, autonomous, unrooted)
I’ve also done a lot of purer linguistic things --
like “ratta,” like “voya” & “piec” (in future
Tottel’s), like the 12 pp. of most recent collabs
w/ Michael i sent you -- also i’ve done things
which are mostly linguistic but somewhat evoca-
tive (of things outside), like “hiking sea” (in
future Tottel’s) -- finally, i’ve done things
that are mostly evocative but have #3 elements
prominent w/in them (like “splinters him,” like
“flying,” like Nitric Lateral Prayer -- espe-
cially in parts, like my poem in Tottel’s 6)
To achieve a purely linguistic poem it’s probably
necessary to extirpate all evocative elements
96  The Language Letters

-- hence, to use purely non-referential language (as

in some of Coolidge, your Narr, my “ratta,” some of
my collabs w/ Michael)
Another analogy w/ this #2-#3 distinction is prose-­
novels.
#1: old “great” novels you dissect in class
#2: evocative novels -- probably most
#3: Stein?
Gilman’s comment on Gass’ Omensetter’s Luck was that
the narrative form was unnecessary, because the
words themselves had enuf interest & structure on
their own
Sontag’s brilliant “Literature” article in The Great
Ideas Today 1966 (definitely worth reading): real-
ism as the main tradition (which necessarily
implies the hegemony of #2 over #3) -- where the
task is to render a world w/ a more or less cred-
ible story, complex characters, linear narrative,
& ordinary discursive language -- the novel as a
mirror of reality: not a work of art -- the main
interest for most people in these novels being what
they are about.
Then, there’s the avant-garde formalist tradition
(fairly meager compared to painting & of course
music which is much better suited to a non-evocative
(non-referring, non-mirroring) formalism -- (Joyce,
Stein, Barnes, Riding)
“Works of literature should stimulate, first of all,
as works of art and not as representations of an
outer reality” -- i.e., sacrifice the representa-
tional or reportorial function (tho, to go all the
way to pure formalism may be only possible in music
or poetry? --)
The texture of language becomes the subject of the lit-
erary object (what Sontag calls the Joycean tradi-
tion -- now Gass, LeRoi Jones (?), etc.
“Gass has appropriated the intensity of myth without
the literalness of actual reference”
 The Language Letters 97

(article on Debussy in High Fidelity nicely counter-

points these things)

So, my problem w/ #1 “expressional” poets is that

there’s not enuf excitement on the #3 “linguis-
tic” level -- or not enuf use of the #2 “evoca-
tive” option -- this is for example what imiss in
Michael’s poems at times
My problem w/ #2 poets -- well, i’m usually glad the
expressional aspects are oblique, i.e., evocative
-- but usually there’s too much unnecessary evo-
cation (Gilman’s complaint w/ Gass, mine w/ some
of Eigner, say) -- so i try to do #2 poems w/
more #3
But, still, my problem w/ most #3 people (say,
Coolidge) is the total absence of #2!! -- only
rarely (much more rarely than w/ music or paint-
ing) are the pure non-evocative words (“he/the/
then/or”) enough to hold my interest. It’s as
though (unlike music which has a non-evocative
language) to make the language purely non-evoca-
tive, you’re not left with enough building blocks
(for me = for one reader)
Division Two -- another way of dividing the outcome
(the poem) -- this is a behavioral division, not
a division of author’s goals: This will overlap
quite a bit w/ the 1st division, but since it’s
one i thought of 1st i want to try it out

A. Meaningfulness B. Referential - Non-referential

spectrum C. Degree of Fragmentation

A. Meaningfulness is a systems property -- the degree

to which the poem as a whole (or in large “regions”
of it) points to a pre-set network of emotions,
events, perceptions, objects, thoughts -- presents a
pointer toward a network of qualities or relations
“The sea is as blue as the sky”
Meaningfulness strikes me as a necessary property
98  The Language Letters

for all #1 poems (straight forward expressional)

& for almost all poets between #1 & #2. Anyone
between 1 & 2 will have something to express &
will not take a pure #2 option (leaving the poem
open to a variety of evocations)
High meaningfulness is high manipulation
I think the Dada-ists [BA inserts: & Stein] (& prob-
ably many before them, w/ whom i’m not familiar)
started to do away w/ meaningfulness as a systems
property
ex: “The sea is blue / The sea is never blue” --
each “region” of the poem is meaningful, but the
regions are antithetical (i.e., the networks of
characteristics to which each region refers are
antithetical)
ex: “The sea is blue like an apple” -- which is
cheap dada: at the level of the whole poem, there
is little meaningfulness

B & C are ways to emphasize the value of words as

objects -- 2 alternate strategies, in fact

B. Referential-ness
Meaningfulness is referentialness on the system
level
Referentialness is how much the words point to a
pre-set network of characteristics, relations,
etc. outside themselves
“sea”, “blue”, “apple” are vividly referentialness
As Stein noted, as Coolidge put it in his blip in
the Carroll anthology, words have other qualities
than as referents -- they have scope, weight,
length, degree of emphasis, sounds, space around
them (i.e., relationship to exterior silence)
Coolidge, i.e., has aimed at completely (or close
to it) non-referential poems -- as have some con-
crete poets (but the latter have renounced the
linguistic structure)
Picture poems might be non-referential non-linguis-
tic structures
 The Language Letters 99

ex: instead of “The sky is blue” you might have “the

the is the” -- or “in or ambit him the then” --
scoring the poem to bring out other relations
betw the words than the relations of their mean-
ings or the relations of the things they refer to
ex from the collabs: “tuhtuh hol quarr grabb”
“antidia-just”
“that if the quite”

C. Fragmentation -- to have a purely #3 (linguistic)

poem it may be necessary to be completely non-­
referential even in the words used (i.e., w/ Gre-
nier, the referential nature of the words is always
drawing me out of the poem & into their meanings,
i.e., references). But since i’m unhappy w/ many
#3 people precisely because they are totally non-­
evocative, i want a way to use #3 elements impurely
& still have some things working on a #2 evocative
level. [BA inserts: (If you use referential words
but ignore the effect of their referential-ness you
mess up i think = my problem w/ some of Coolidge &
Grenier or This 2 and Tottel’s 5)]
The “word as object” can be somewhat emphasized by
fragmenting the poem and yet a pure #3 purely
non-referential poem might not use fragmentation
(i.e., Coolidge w/ his long lines): this latter
is not my goal --
I’d like to emphasize one dimension of #3: the
other qualities of the words, w/out making them
non-referential -- i think this can be done via
fragmentation (the lesson of Eigner/Coleman) &
the residual referential character of the words
(as in “hiking sea”) can be used as a way of
keeping a dimension of evocativeness
In other words, pure #3 may need non-referential
words, but can avoid fragmentation (which is
really a way of making referential words function
as objects) -- whereas a highly fragmented com-
promise betw. #3 & #2 (i.e., a lot of my poems
100  The Language Letters

à la “splinters him”) can avoid totally non-­

referential words. I like doing both, but right
now “sea / blue / red” has a certain interest,
along with “xxxyxxxx xxth xx ll m m xx” -- thus
between Coolidge (non-referential, non-meaning-
ful, often not fragmented) & Eigner (fragmented,
often non-meaningful at the level of the whole
poem or poem region, but very referential at the
microlevel) & me somewhere in between at times
I’m thinking of writing this up as an article, so any
comments’d help (especially sharp critical ones) --
i’ll answer your letter soon, Ron.

time to go

Bruce

————

13. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman, n.d.

Hi Ron --

I think my concern for poetry, for this new direction,

for yr letters, for our relationship -- is taking a quan-
tum jump. Many good emotions flowing a lot more easily,
& informing the intellectual enthusiasm. Got Barthes & a
couple other things (good article on Lacan, chapter of a
book on semiotics in the cinema): been rewriting lots &
lots of old poems (i’m planning to spend June rewriting,
at least somewhat, all my unpublished poems from ’69 to
about April ’72 (everything up to “splinters him” & the
more recent ones i sent you) -- because the ones that
aren’t consciously “new thing” (word as object, etc.)
need to have that concern for sound, form, etc. worked
in, w/out making them consciously into avant-garde poems,
& the ones that are “new,” avante, etc. were mostly that
way by means of (my best friend from college’d say “by
dint of”) negation & deletion -- i left things out, com-
ing up w/ fragmented, non-meaningful poems which were
 The Language Letters 101

interesting more for their deletions than for the con-

cern w/ sound, space, densities, etc. they should’ve used
to replace these deletions with -- most, tho, weren’t,
because in ’69-’72 i didn’t really grasp what Coolidge
et al. were doing in a positive sense (i’m sure this is
because i never read Eigner & Stein) -- but now i do.
Please write & if you’ve got the time tell me where in
the collabs you think the flaws are, also in the big
bunch i sent you, which you don’t & do like, & if you’d
be open to having me do MOHAWK as a booklet. And what
you’ve been doing!

[BA annotates: Wrote a 25 pp. booklet after reading MOHAWK

-- will get you a copy xeroxed when i can -- got a poem in
Beyond Baroque! -- enclosing Toothpick: please send Wiater
a Tottel’s if you’ve got one, my praise has made him lust
for a look. Finally here’re the Upstarts; & i’m going to
send you a xerox of WestWest soon cause i think you won’t
like it & i need some feedback.]

[BA annotates: Have you seen Grenier’s fine “Sticky Fin-

gers” poem (abt. 10 pp.) in Franconia Review ’71 -- arti-
cle on Franconia, nice, in the new New Yorker: 23 yr old
College President!]

Bruce

————

14. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews (8/17/72), excerpt

Korn is an old fraternity friend? fraternity??? ah, this

reminds me that you’ve never really elaborated on yr past
much. why dont ya do so. these letters are so crazy a mode
of communicating. fictional paper people.

————
102  The Language Letters

15. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman (“1/2X/73”), excerpt

Thanks for the well-put hesitation about “language-­

centered writing” -- it is too broad, but somehow “non-
referential” is too narrow & “word as object” seems too
cold, “word-events” a little closer, but i’d still like to
include (or maybe they already are, hmm) people who use
sentence/syntax/less discreteness/fewer edges . . . . .
. . . probably unnecessary to get it sharply delineated,
except my biggest fear would be (partly emerging as FACT)
that w/out an overarching category, the thing may degener-
ate into a mere aggregation of persons -- i.e., a clique,
w/ certain unnecessary exclusions, etc. Owell since i’m
sure no leader, i can beg off.

[. . . .]

OK: In “New Thing Poetry” or whatever you i call it,

there’s no real Establishment, made up of older accepted
poets, but all of a sudden there are “centers of power,”
which each of these editors w/ their magazines seems to
[BA inserts: however consciously] create and they thereby
control the vast majority of possible outlets for the kind
of poetry i write. So am i supposed to grovel to them; of
course not. BUT. . . . . . [BA inserts: “be cool”]

Unlike the NYC type editors they really seem to act almost
like the guardians at the gate w/ a sense of that power
and therefore are not at all encouraging or permissive
& give me (or have given me) no sense of commonality or
sharing or camaraderie (all of which i’ve felt so strongly
& wonderfully coming from you -- who edit the other maga-
zine “available” in a sense) but only a sense of “do this
& we may let you in” (in what? -- the club??) -- a sense
which far transcends the mere particulars of getting in
any particular magazine. [BA annotates: KEY]

————
 The Language Letters 103

16. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman (6/7/73)

Ron -- i’ve been thinking greatly (GREAT)(as in) about our

correspondences, especially in last year & use to which
we’ve put them in understanding things (which becomes
“guiding things” both in our own work and in our sense of
other peoples’, etc. etc.).

I’m thinking that we should do something & i’m thinking

that we should do something grand & i’m thinking.
This issue of Toothpick has been, for me, what i think (at
least one thing) Tottel’s has been for you: a chance to
explore, probe & clarify -- much more than a chance for
self-aggrandizement (Dionne Warwick on: “You Won’t Get to
Heaven If You Break My Heart”) & all.

But i think now something has evolved which is gaining more

& more a presence (saw you & Joyce Holland in Ghost Dance) &
more & more of our evolutions are bound up by an inter-sub-
jectively shared context than was true before (say, a year
ago or -- especially -- a year & a half ago) [BA annotates:
We can both come up w/ a dozen examples of this in the
last year, so, right? It’s TIME, so why wait.]. Many things
pointing in this direction: a gathering, a taking shape.
From the hundreds of pages of work i’ve looked at from the
people we both know of there is something: phoenix.

Due to everyone’s latent jealousy et al. please keep this

suggestion to ourself. And it’s only a vague suggestion.

I think we should could plan (i.e., map out -- as a clari-

fication of our thoughts, feelings, lives) (god forbid) an
anthology. I think it would be (A) exciting (B) finally pos-
sible & (C) either publishable or self-publishable. But i
mean a large & scoped-out thing. These are merest specula-
tions about possibilities: either 2 good sized or 1 long col-
lab introductions -- in a variety of forms: epigrams, quotes,
discussion of history, etc. [BA annotates: also bibliogra-
phy, sources, etc.] & here we could both give long quotations
from historical precedents (Stein, Zukofsky, etc.) & do our
104  The Language Letters

(important to us) clarification WORK. What it means, what

its significance is, where it stems from, etc. Long essays.
Then healthy chunks of work by a dozen people or so. We could
best approach the latter thru going thru all the relevant
published work (in books, anthologies, mags) & picking out
several hundred (say) pages of our favorites as a basis -- &
then contact the authors, tell them which we’d tentatively
picked & asking them for work which they’d like either to (A)
possibly supplement these (B) possibly replace them: that
way we’d have their input & yet still some overall editorial
shaping. [BA annotates: For an anthology i wouldnt want it to
be pure laissez-faire, because everyone’s work would bounce
off everyone else’s. You said we should have faith enuf in
people to let them hang themselves, but i’m finding the way
you’re doing (were doing) my Tottel’s issue a better way. We
dont have to be Kostelanetz.] Names off the top of my head:
Coolidge, Eigner, Saroyan, Rothenberg etc. (the sixties) &
Grenier, Acconci, Silliman, Andrews, DiPalma, Melnick, Pres-
ton, Baracks, Holland, Gitin -- for ex., offhand, that’s for
me the dozen whose work as a whole has interest for me but
there are others, etc. No need to make an exclusive Pantheon
but a need, perhaps, to get some light on this grouping in
the “outside world.” (i.e., outside our mailing lists!). Let
me know what you think & i think of you a lot, Ron.

[BA annotates: I REALLY THINK THIS WOULD BE A TERRIFIC

THING TO WORK ON (it’d get us back together, as well).]

Love,

Bruce

————

17. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews (6/12/73)

Bruce --

much as I like the idea of an anthology, I

don’t think that it’s presently feasible, for a number of
 The Language Letters 105

reasons. An anthology functions differently from either an

individual’s work collected into book form or a magazine,
either of which can be self-published in ways useful to
those involved; an anthology cannot. Its function seems to
be simply to collect work that is either “representative”
or “best” of X # of folk & make that available in a sin-
gle space to a broad audience. Problems therefore of size,
quality of printing & most importantly DISTRIBUTION (wch
is the key to any publishing venture) demand an established
publisher. No such publisher is likely to venture his dough
for such a venture on the part of 2 writers not themselves
“established” in the NY pub world market. Of those 14 you
mention in your dozen (generally a good selection tho I
wld quarrel with some) who cld obtain such a go-ahead wld
be Rothenberg &, much as I dig his work, I doubt that his
book wld be the book you & I see as possible. 2nd problem:
the potential publisher wld note the presence of the older
writers in the group as evidence that such a volume is not
yet needed, or rather contraindicated by the presence of
such garbage as (a) the Solt anthology (b) Quasha/Gross
anthology & (c) All Stars. I sent a letter around to sev-
eral major publishers (like 40) back in ’71 & the response
I got was pretty much in that area. Loewinsohn, inciden-
tally, has been trying to get a publisher for an evolving
anthology of “yng” poets for years w/ no success at all &
given his credentials (books, even from Harcourt, a PhD &
a gig at UC Berkeley) it says something. Lastly & aside
from those problems: it seems like a lot of work, like
several hours/week, for a period of at least a year + I’m
not convinced that editing in that fashion is of that much
value (my own opinion of any editor, myself most certainly
included, is one of total distrust -- I’m for almost any
system wch removes control from them to another, usually
the writer). Faville approached me a few months back w/ a
similar idea (his was for an anthology of minimalist work)
wch as an idea has the advantage of its clearer, more nar-
row, definition of the problem, but still suffers from all
of the above.
106  The Language Letters

I think that in general little mag editors

now have some idea of the inter-relations present in the
work of us all & that in 2 to 5 years, things continuing in
their “natural” (i.e., minimal manipulation on our part)
pattern, the politics for such a gathering will be right,
tho I personally doubt the value of putting in our elders
(Rothenberg or Saroyan say) -- it seems more real, yep,
real, to keep it solid & at the center. What I see as being
more to the point, from the view of editing, is something
along the lines of what the NY poets anthology wch Shapiro
& Padgett did -- ask all the people to give them the pages
they wld want to be represented by and choose from that.

I’m
taking this week off to take care of a lot of garbage that
needs to get done; want to get a submission or 2 off --
perhaps even a ms. of a tiny book. Get my place cleaned
up, it’s chaos right now. &, natch, relax. First full week
away from work since Feb/72 -- I really need it.

Saw STATE
OF SIEGE w/ Watten the other night. Barry was real defen-
sive about it, a consequence I guess of his parents
[. . .]. Barbara, the other day, asked if I had any word
from you as to Big Deal. She I think was hoping for a let-
ter or something on it, some idea as to what you thought.
She may at some pt this summer find herself in Cambridge
& wld no doubt look you up, I reckon. What are yr plans
for the near/further futures . . . I know I’m not all that
good abt my letters myself but I get the sense of getting
these notes at random intervals w/ takes on poesy, mags,
such events, but not enough scam on yr work/self beyond yr
writing, wch may be the center but is not the sole locus
of my interest in ya, huh?

Reading further & fur-

ther into Pynchon’s huge bk, w/ Gatsby, Making of Americans
& How to Write all awaiting my finishing of it -- fuck-
ing great book. Going to have to go see the Giants at some
 The Language Letters 107

point in the future. Want to see Bryant pitching, so have

to figure that out closely, no. Mebbe a dbl header.

My own
writing lately has been in a very conservative (& thus
nihilistic) mode, some of wch will be in the next THIS,
plus a prose work I am really happy w/ there also.

Last
thot -- Jim Haining is planning to bop in on you in the
near future I suspect.

write,
wrought,
rote,

Ron

into the dark night of the esophagus.

reported by the Enema Hotline far
enmeshed in a gossamer web of bullshit,
Rats live on no evil star

EATERS’ DIGEST

————
108  The Language Letters

18. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews (8/7/73)

Dear Bruce,

relaxing, uncharacteristically, at home, been wanting to

write you, get some shit done, a chance just to breathe
etc., so i scheduled a # of meetings i had to make in
the city into one day; stevie wonder (talking bk) on
the stereo, superb music. am sposed to go over to dorn’s
later, give him a rap abt cphj [Committee for Prisoner
Humanity and Justice] (he, creeley & kyger are all going
to do a benefit for cphj). it’s a gray day & i woke w/ a
terrific hangover & am now only beginning (tis 2pm) to
come around, eating a bowl of peas for lunch, smoking my
first cigar of the day (elliot’s ladyfriend sez: yeah,
you’re sort of an aryan fidel castro). ray & betsi were
here for a week, went down to salinas for a few days,
then will either be back here or over at jack shoemak-
er’s -- he of sand dollar press & serendipity books --
in berkeley. ray is a quiet but constant talker, he &
i spent almost every nite talking till 2am -- surpris-
ing # of things we have in common (for example, we both
come from homes broken by divorce during our under-10
years & were both principally raised by grandparents in
working class neighborhoods); i was expecting, i sus-
pect, somebody considerably more macho, or gruffer, than
this paisano-intellectual (his term); he has some of
the features & traits of melnick, also odd; i.e., same
roundness of features, tendency to wear clothes that
hide body-shape (trenchcoats etc.) he is still upset/
bitter (?) at michael, maybe “hurt” is a better term.
brought lots of great weed that slater laid on him in
kc. betsi is a very quiet person (possibly even a little
uptight in her relations w/ the world), an art student,
very good by the way, whom ray met whilst teaching at
bg [Bowling Green State University]. must admit i was
impressed w/ them both; always nice to find that these
 The Language Letters 109

presences one writes to (a la gitin) are really fine

people also. that’s not true of very many writers i
know. barry & jim preston had us over for a big din-
ner, the night before barry headed off for taiwan. by
the way, you ought to take what barbara sez abt barry
w/ some grain of salt. at least, assuming the version
you got was the same one that rae got. barbara gets too
much of her ego involved in things like that & comes
away w/ a really distorted sense of how things occur.
tho, i have to admit that barry was a shit all the way
thru that whole sequence of events (tho she has since
more than returned the favor). yr issue of toothpick
has taken on the sense of an Awaited Event in conversa-
tions hereabts, michael having mentioned it to lots of
people, it comes up in conversations, everybody sort of
curious [to] see what that guy’s (you) sense of what’s
happening is . . . ray & i & barry &c. all have the
sense i suspect of realizing that Something is going on
now wch we all are a part of, but wch nobody has wholly
yet defined. barry & i hope to do a reading sometime
in october at the intersection coffee house, as a way
of better defining for ourselves, what we see going on/
down. ray has 2 or 3 projects in mind for doones press
wch sound interesting (he was working over a list of
people whom he thot he might want to invite to submit
for a huge issue of shirt or whatever he’ll call it; a
cpl of doones bks in the air, including perhaps a pam-
phlet of mohawk). havent heard from barbara in weeks;
possibly she is mad at me forever again, a recurring
thing. i know what you mean abt her ignoring the pos-
itive things one sez abt her ideas &/or work. god do
I know it! her paranoia is only one of a dozen things
going on in her head any given second, & is something
i’ve never known how to deal w/ adequately. i’m really
sorry that wet loom star arrived the same time she was
110  The Language Letters

there.32 she may take that as intentional. i wanted to

give all my copies of it away, both so that you cld have
it (the other copies went to tom meyer, melnick & ray) &
so that i cld get it out of here. if i put a bk together
at this pt, it’ll be a different bk. the short poems
in the + pages are the ones that make up nox; i’ve put
together 3 other pamphlets out of it, dont know where to
send them tho (well, one is just mohawk, wch may now be
“taken care of”); one of the short poems from pp. 17-on,
wch i’m calling “moscow mule” (after a great drink that
chuck and rae make); another of the almost sonnet-like
non-referential poems, a la “rue whelm,” called “meadow
muffins”; the last one wld have “cloud,” the narr,
“flense,” etc. no idea what to call that as yet (i have
nursed this cigar now for 45 minutes) -- my ideas as
to writing right now seem much clearer than they did 8
wks ago, i think i’m in the middle of another “growth”
period, of wch “allures” is thus far the best example
(yr opinion, also Ray’s); T11 is a poem, writ in ’71,
called oflengths, visually akin to the sequence in all
stars, but w/ a very different internal structure; going
to start preparing it for the printer this week; ray
hadnt made up his mind as to what he wants to do w/ T12
yet; “oange” is not from T13, but 20 other pieces from
that series pcoet; think i finally, aha, got mcaleavey
to see how I see my work, only took 5 years to do it,
but he now seems at least to tune in on what it is i
am looking to (he is also beating me at our chess game,
damn his eyes); as to me assuming you are “of the ruling
class?” that comment is positively odd. . . .

going to move my arse out of here,

bye bye.
hope this gets to wherever you be
over the army-days (how many mo’
years of that shit you gotta put up

32. This collection, which Silliman describes as “essentially Mohawk plus other early work
that played with a vispo sense of the page,” was never published.
 The Language Letters 111

w/? say hello to ellen/ jim sd to

say when i wrote, too, so hi for
jim, that sterling lad). ciao now,

Ron
————

19. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews (12/1/73), excerpt

best new writer i’ve seen in ages is charles bernstein,

formerly of harvard (philosophy dept i think) now in santa
barbara, at 1923 de la vina #8, sb, ca 93101, who shld be
added to yr mailing list (if you keep one).33 very stein
oriented, but w/ an understanding of why he is that way,
what that means in structural terms, where that might take
him. he sent some work out of what sense i don’t know to
Tottel’s & i said, oh heavy stein but good stuff, let me
see more, so he did, viz.:

implies
other things being equal
will not hold
specific things will be the cause
must so interpret
a certain description implies a certain description
this argument runs as follows
desire to perform a certain action
since it is self contradictory to suppose
is not a contingent relation
escape the logical connexion argument
description dont enter into entailment relations

wch is the best single work i’ve seen by somebody essen-

tially unknown to me since you sent yr first work (no?).
there were others, less strong, but the above is for me
that thing i need to see, a real working (thinking almost

33. Bernstein was first in touch with Silliman in 1973 at the suggestion of Jerome Rothen-
berg (see appendix 3).
112  The Language Letters

of Ez’ take on that slight little Joyce poem wch he used

[“I Hear an Army”], finding as a result that drunk bespec-
tacled Irishman), deposits a sense of trust in me, inter-
est in what comes next.

————

20. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman (12/16/73), excerpt

Good to hear about Charles Bernstein -- send me some more

pieces (it may be a while before I write him) if you have
them (the one you quoted sounded more like Antin or con-
ceptual art than the Stein influence you mentioned).

————

21. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews (3/11/74)

Dear Bruce,

I’ll write right back (out of sinus city), Bach cantatas

on, slight rain (winter here not about to quit), citywide
strike a royal pain (I walkd 45 minutes this morning to
get my ride over the bridge to the next county to work)
((i.e., no buses!)). Am working on an article on Duncan
for Maps but no energy (mentally) to go on in that area
esta noche, so read Kenner, Lippard etc.34 Seems to me to
make sense, literally, to begin at your p. 9 list in the
monstrously large letter in this day’s mail, re panthe-
ons (?) etc. I’m not so sure of pantheons as interesting
writers & a few (very) great poems. E.g., little of Words­
worth beyond The Prelude interests me, but that holds my
attention FIRM, at the Center. Anyhow, to recall yr list
for you (Stein, Williams, Zukofsky, Oppen, Bunting, Rakosi,
HD, Creeley, Ashbery, O’Hara, Rothenberg, Eigner, Schuyler?
Mac Low? Blackburn? Coolidge, Grenier? Palmer? (yr “?s”).
Pound, Stein, Williams, Zukofsky, Creeley, Ashbery, O’Hara,

34. As Silliman recalls, “The Pound Era was the book from Kenner” and “Lippard’s Six
Years: The Dematerialization of Art” was “an important book for me.”
 The Language Letters 113

Eigner, Coolidge, Grenier -- w/ some reservations (e.g.,

the extent to wch Ashbery is a combine of the influences of
Roche & Pleynet from the French & the likes of Chris Smart
v. the extent to wch he has done his own work -- almost
forgot to mention the influence of Milton!). Oppen, no: his
work, tho good where it is, is too narrow, too many minor
variations of themes by Zuk & WCW. Bunting too only has a
few poems that totally convince me, Rakosi almost none. HD,
only a fraction of her work (trilogy) wch opens up a hori-
zon where it works, but it really like Oppen is a narrow
achievement. Rothenberg, no, he hasn’t got the work qual-
itatively at all. He is at his best doing translations &
tho provocative & useful, they aren’t always good poems.
Schuyler? No, he’s got only one or 2 gimmicks & sort of
funnels all the world thru (Hymn to Life certainly demon-
strates this, wch is the danger that Palmer confronts also,
no?). Mac Low has worked provocatively (i.e., has opened
possibilities) but has never managed to do so w/ any great
technical accomplishment, often predictable in his solu-
tions (same huge fault as in Saroyan). Much of Stanzas to
Iris Lezak, for example, is dull. Blackburn never worked
w/ enough precision in his definition of voice (wch was
his theme for christsake!). Palmer, as above. What really
surprises me w/ this list is the absence of EZRA POUND! I
once spent 18 months reading only the Cantos, it is worth
it. Also: David Antin (much better than Mac Low, say, or
than Schwerner, who cops out on all the major decisions
he makes), and Phil Whalen, who has described voice bet-
ter than any man (Clifford Burke sez rightly, distrust the
poet who ain’t got On Bear’s Head). But basically, aside
from lists, categories & rankings, most of wch are beside
the point, there is only the work to be got to, at. Basi-
cally, I feel that at any point there are probably only 4
to 5 writers who are writing well enough for me to feel
compelled to study what they’re doing, to learn from that
(wch is where Clark, Berkson, Palmer etc. represent to me
the work ahead). Lots of other good work about, but never
w/ that sense in it that every element is intentional
(often writers do not sustain that willfulness either as,
say, Kelly has not). Abt the others you mention: Enslin
114  The Language Letters

-- learned a way to channel all info into a system & churn

it out, a pt where formalism breaks, literally, down. A
good example of a deliberately minor worker from whom there
is not a lot to learn. Spicer -- in spite of all the BS
he himself puts around him, & the weird sense of speech
he relies on, he is really there, a good example of a mind
making forms: Language, Book of Mag Verse & Heads of the
Town up to the Aether are minor classics all of them. He
was a very central character in my own development tho is
one guy whose books I own not one copy of now (due to first
Shelley, then Barbara having most), Clark is I think a
minor writer who cld have gone much higher, seems to fuck
it up, aims at minor points, makes wrong decisions. Elms-
lie is, as far as I can tell, unreadable. Corman is did-
dling in the margins (O these quips!) Olson is still, for
me, MAJOR, tho mebbe is not a good poet (the old problem
of how often movements will have 3 key figures, the man
who opens the territory up (Pollack, Olson), the one who
does the completed, finished surfaces, usually is the most
“popular” (de Kooning, Duncan) & finally the one who is
most useful to learn from (Newman, Creeley)). I’m rereading
Archaeologist of Morning now. Whalen is as I said major.
Sorrentino is doing marginally interesting work (wch is not
a rejection per se, but a sense of place), Kyger is doing
fine things tho where she’s headed I honestly can’t say.
She’s much sharper, smarter than she lets on, her sense
of vowels (wch is where her contribution really comes in
& counts, is where, say, she has had major impact on both
Creeley & Berkson) is one of the most precise. Besides, if
Marilyn Monroe wrote poems, she would write Joanne’s! Irby
is off well into his own bag, a well-done thing of no use
& only slight interest to others on this planet, a soli-
tude I think he digs. Wieners is the person people use to
think Gregory Corso was going to be. Our mad poet. He has
a superb sense of certain older forms (the quatrain in par-
ticular), a perfect honesty, a good ear & well, yes, he is
in a minority reality as Laing wld say. I love his work,
love the idea of a madman’s formalism. Jonathan Williams is
doing fine minor scrollworks in small niches, is content
w/ that. I like his humor, his sense of form. Wish, tho,
 The Language Letters 115

he had any ambition. Meltzer is a dodo. Koch is a slick

writer who has had no new formal ideas to contribute & is
a poetry scene gangster of the worst order. Most of what I
object to, occasionally, in the NY scene seems to stem out
of his grinning forehead. Dorn has written beautifully & may
do so again. I can’t imagine how he can use as much dope as
he does & not totally burn out tho. Duncan is at the edge
of being one of the great writers, but is too indulgent to
get there finally I think. Another example of a talent being
not used to its fullest possible extent. Snyder does nothing
one cld not find in Pound, & much better, & in his woodsy-
ethos carries around a real & to me quite dangerous mode
of fascism, a real death force. Anyhow, so much for those
guys. What about David Jones, Tom Raworth? By the way, about
Berkson, I disagree w/ you as to the poems in the New York
anthology: I like ’em. I think that basically they are doing
what he does best (cf. “October”) wch is write a poetry
based on the word as focus in discourse & a very quiet
rounded & pastel formalism in all he does. I think also that
he’s improved radically since then, but it’s all there.

You say that what you’d like is something more like “Edge
in variability though longer” wch is where my sense of a
bk is I suspect different. Think rather that each volume
is itself a completed work, that each piece therein shld
have some specific relation to the whole (tho not neces-
sarily one articulated prior by the writer). Simply large
gatherings are ok, but lack the sheer force available
in the other manner. Wch was why for me CORONA (Juan??)
really was doing it so well. This is a very Spicerian way
of looking at a book, but see no reason otherwise to have
books as compared to other forms of making public, no?

Hopefully now Herman will get Maintains out thru Graham

McIntosh, thus avoiding the problem of the few hundred
thou . . . BUT, the ms. hath disappeared, so Clark has to
xerox it all over!!! (& where’s Mattingly, the other ½ of
that partnership gone acropper, but in SF w/ D Gray, tho
no idee in my head as to whether The Maintains is, so to
speak, in town also...). Fuckups, fuckups.
116  The Language Letters

Interesting to have yr comments on my comments on Tooth-

pick. Yes, Wiater is out to use people. He seems to have a
proprietary hold on the Seattle scene (much as Michael has
on DC) & really is out to milk it. Still a nice enuf char-
acter. My point abt the width was sort of back to what I’d
sd previous, abt only a handful of people really deserv-
ing study, really doing good work, at any time. The folks
in Alcheringa are for me mostly of that quality! I hope
I so feel in 6 months! Not certainly all that is possi-
ble but some thereof & all good. My commitment is not to
my peers but to the language. Most writers of this gener-
ation, like any other, are going to fuck up all over the
place & end deservedly along the waysides. I do like the
likes of LeWitt etc., but felt that it was, say, beside
the pt. as far as an assertion of poetry, that it confused
certain issues (tho I do include Sondheim as a writer, not
an “other” to my mind). The assertion did to me seem a key
possibility, it is the one thing we have not had yet (by
wch I mean the kinds of writers I like) the wholly ideal
forum. Rothenberg, who wants a heavy connexion to the past
(wch exists!) concretized, w/ space limitations & other
workers, Barry’s too heavy leaning on older writers in
certain respects, Tottel’s lack of funds, etc. etc. What
one wants eventually is something of the weight & clarity
of the Allen anthology to know the others out of the park.

I mean this: I’m out to write poetry (& perform the tan-
gential work that goes w/ it, editing, critically etc.)
that CHANGES the way poetry & the word are seen in this
place, nothing less, & a series, a lifelong series of
assertions is what I’m after, boom Boom BOOOOOMMM! Mebbe
that’s dogmatic, selfimportant etc., but lookit, there are
the words, there are the Words. Each wrapped around some-
thing unspeakable, that pt. where the word refuses to sub-
mit to meaning, how else get there???

Energy,

Ron
 The Language Letters 117

————

22. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews (5/2/74)

Dear Bruce,

do sympathize w/ your sense of the mails, yr “problems”

getting answers written, sense that yr beginning to feel
the way I do in that arena of action (or whatever) . . .
bitch to want, really want to write to X, only to have
neither time nor energy to do so. Some days I come home
11pm from meetings or whatever, only to find 6 or 7 let-
ters waiting, not having on a cpl of occasions [time or
energy] to even read them. Life these past few weeks has
been both hell & wonderful (a very fine line there),
no vacant spaces at all. I got a raise at work (after
3 years, well, almost, I now get $304 per month after
taxes, actually $304.01, but who wld believe THAT??) Lis-
tening to Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On album, wch is a
great piece of music, probably the work that proves/jus-
tifies everything Motown’s ever done. Saw the card you
sent to Barry, glad you liked my work there. I was afraid,
seriously, that the syntagmatic bent there wld alienate
you to what I was trying to do. I’ve been reading lots
of Quine of late, plus Sweezy (that, sir, is yr doing,
well worth it, thanks), new bks by Eigner, Gitin, L 4-5,
Hills 2, Big Deal 2, etc. L is wonderful, Curtis’ sense
there really reflects his sense of the world, its need
for c l e a n n e s s as well as precision. Big Deal
much more of a gamble, more guts to it in that sense, but
much less of a finish. Hills more of a home industry by
those standards. I was pissed w/ Gegenschein they left a
whole line out of the middle of one of my pieces, can you
imagine?? Notley bk was a disapptment for me, I was hop-
ing for much more, as I’d seen better (so I thot) in such
places as All Stars. Jim Gustafson & David Anderson vol-
umes will be coming out from that source soon (soon as
Barry types them & Tom Veitch prints ’em), tho Jim, who
[I] like lots as a “guy,” is almost a neighbor now, I cant
118  The Language Letters

get up enthusiasm for either. Readings next month include

one by Acker, but on a night when I have to teach a class
(on the politics behind prison construction), also one by
MacAdams I shld be able to get to. What free time I’ve
had, I’ve spent boogieing or writing some poems (nothing
too much of interest, so I feel tonight). Have gotten good
feedback on “Berkeley,” wch makes me happy -- that piece
was a risk for me. On risk, as a rule of thumb -- risk
is a safer bet than non-risk, insofar as poems go, the
best feel uneasy. I liked “Index,” but felt that it was
directed (as to my mind the Alch. prose is largely also
so) toward questions we’ve all moved beyond now, no? I
liked yr piece in Big Deal 2 a lot, felt it was one of yr
strongest individual works (as was the first one in This).
I like THESE, tho some seem to bend toward easy humors
(always the problem w/ short juxtapositions). I like the
relational space as focus. The pieces in L also seem to be
putting your best foot forward. Let’s see. It’s late, I’m
going to get to bed soon, so I’ll stick to the questions
in the 2 notes & hope for an answer in the next week or
so: as to who I sent Nox & Mohawk to, I just sent them to
either correspondees or personal friends. I like “black
beauty” & other mooche of yrs in Gegenschein, tho I think
that mag does best by Ray and Bob Perelman (who, w/ Alan
Sondheim, has been for me one of the people of late I’ve
been paying close attention to whatever I see of, so as to
get an idea of their work). My works in there date from
early to mid 1973. Anyhow, midnight, to sleep,

Ron

————

23. Steve McCaffery to Bruce Andrews (“fall ’75”)

dear bruce:

enclosed here is the translation issue of open letter.

yes yes yes the idea of a collaboration excites me. I
 The Language Letters 119

think to treat the whole thing initially from a proces-

sual stance kind of open field correspondence sounds
good. bp and myself have a free hand with content in the
trg [Toronto Research Group] section of open letter. read
if you get a chance george steiner’s after babel wch
looks from a distance like a tremendous contribution to
translation.

your “index” will be out soon i think (have seen the

proofs at least though toronto printing is pretty fossil-
ized). it’ll be appearing alongside an interesting piece
by a local guy maurice (mor rees) farge on the sexual-
ity of vowels and consonants, a piece by wayne clifford
and some notes on trope by myself -- it should be a good
issue. also has my review of michael palmer’s latest the
circular gates.

delighted to hear of your visit to toronto in feb. i hope

there’s enough time to get together for some long raps and
eating.

enclosing too a brochure you may/may not have received

regarding the language & structure exhibition that’s hap-
pening here in nov.

barry alpert was in town a few weeks ago sightseeing and

writing reviews. the man has terrific energy. i’m working
on a saussurian slanted piece on ronald johnson for the
next issue dealing (my piece pretty well exclusively) with
the structural andontic implication of quotation in his
work. johnson is a writer whom i really respect and has
been a great influence on my own work.

have not seen ironwood with your open piece in it and wd

love a copy if you have one, failing the total goodies,
how about a xerox of your piece.

there’s an international poetry festival happening in

toronto oct.-nov. with some big guns from the u.s.
120  The Language Letters

including creeley, octavio paz from cactus co. and thom

gunn from u.k. it could be (like the pope’s easter bless-
ing) but hopefully the protocol will not swamp the talent.

hope life in n.y.c. is going well for you (i’ve written

mac low regarding doing a little book of his in the same
series as yours but as yet have had no response. if you
see or speak to him give him a gennul reminder from me.)

(good news for torontoites is larry wallrich late of the

phoenix bookstore n.y. and of london england has finally
settled in toronto. which means books like nowhere else.
already picked up on some scarce zukofsky, jon. williams
and mid 60s concrete. a good man to stay in touch with.)

write soon (there’s another fucking postal strike threat-

ened in canada).

love

steve

————

24. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews (9/10/75)

Dear Bruce,

it seems odd not writing to you in Boston, odder still to

imagine you, DiPalma, Barbara, Kathy, Bernstein all essen-
tially on the same island. It’s been 6 wks since you wrote
me (I’m getting to be a horrible correspondent), 2 of wch
dissolved into working up in Sacramento (staying in the
Senator Hotel no less, wch was where Ford was coming from
last wk when Ms. Fromme made that untoward gesture, sort
of 1920s gaudy tone to decay, deep red carpets and steamy
radiators in the halls), and another 2 into a flu (wch I’m
getting over just now), taking the opportunity of being
at home instead of at work for once to get halfway caught
 The Language Letters 121

up on all of my mail. When your letter came, most of yr

issue was already at the printers. I will, however, use
the versions you sent of “runs off” and “a parry of girls”
as pp. 19 & 20. When collated it will look like this: p. 1
“Melancholy”, p. 2 “Whiskey White,” pp. 3-4 SONG NO. 45,
pp. 5-6 SONG NO. 1, pp. 7-11 BLUE, p. 12 NO. 159, p. 13
“run a clean towel here,” p. 14 DALLAS DOINGS, p. 15 the
visual work w/ “bow” & “burro goes”, p. 16 NO 32, p. 17
“baling juke box hay” (one version), p. 18 “baling juke
box hay” (second version), plus the other 2. Rather than
put yr new address on p. 20, I’m thinking of waiting until
I have Larry’s also printed and mailing them all together
at once and include a separate single page letter or notes
or whatever that wld include that plus such other commen-
tary on the state of the arts as I might care to make. I
really like the way #14 looks, hope you will too. I expect
the mailing itself will occur in early November (the way
time gets involved in the process always amazes me, what
Shelley always used to call my time paranoia).

Melnick, at a party at his place Sunday, mentioned in

passing that he’d gotten a note from you wch mentioned
the fact that you apparently have had a chance to see the
ALCHERINGA layout. I am, needless to say, curious. Kahn sd
he was pleased, but one never knows just what that means
(no more, say, than you can from my own mention on the
last page re T14).

A thot on yr commentary SIGNIFICATION (& if you think yrs

was a one-day job, wait till you see the doodle of a note
I sent them): “Words only become referential through spe-
cific context.” True, but words originate out of a spe-
cific context & it is inevitably referential. One can,
then, at that pt, alter the context to one of non-refer-
entiality, but only at that pt. There is also (I’m not
certain how exactly to verbalize this) some discernable
difference in a non-referential term wch has other effaced
referential dimensions, and a non-word (such as, say, Mel-
nick uses in places) in a linguistic context. Right now,
122  The Language Letters

the questions of context, syntax & meaning are what focus

my attention. I’m typing up The Fly-Bottle (2197 is tak-
ing longer than I’d expected it to take).35 I’m also at
work on “Sitting Up, Standing, Taking Steps,” which is a
piece using sentences w/out verbs (not only does this pro-
duce a curious static quality, but the fact of it pulls
non-verbs wch are near to verbs, certain adverbs or nouns
wch derive from verbs, etc., very much towards the verb
state. Another piece, in fact the one wch has preoccu-
pied me for the last month or so, is Sunset Debris, a work
that consists only of questions. Neither Sunset Debris
nor “Sitting” etc. make any major use of repetition, and
to that extent at least represent some shift of direction
(advance?). Questions not only force a syntactic struc-
ture onto a perception but also relocate the voice of the
work vis-a-vis the receiver of the text in an interesting
way. There is also a question of the distance involved in
a tone of speech wch I want to play around with (all the
major questions, really, are the most personal).

On the Coolidge thing, I wld say feel free to go to 15

pp. dble space in yr ms. on The Maintains. The center of
the symposium will be a long correspondence between CC
and Paul Metcalf, wherein 2 views of poesy confront one
another. Most of what I have to date beyond that is not
too major (a poem of Eigner’s, 2 things by Padgett, a mem-
oir by Saroyan, a note by Fee Dawson, some photos etc.).

If you havent bought the 3rd & final volume of MAXIMUS or

the COLLECTED BOOKS of Spicer, yr missing out. Spicer’s
a really odd duck, working out a tradition very distant
from ours perhaps but w/ much attention & perception to
language as such (he being a linguist by trade even if a
drunk by occupation).

35. The Fly-Bottle—whose title refers to a claim made by Ludwig Wittgenstein, who once
said that the aim of philosophy is “to show the fly the way out of the fly bottle”—is slated to
be included in Silliman’s current writing project, Universe, which is projected to have 360
parts when completed.
 The Language Letters 123

I did see NASHVILLE, thot it was rich but shallow (lots of

frosting, little cake). Preferred JAWS wch easily tran-
scends its genre & is the best American film since GOD­
FATHER 2 (some of the very best photography ever). Also
saw all the Nicholas Roeg films recently: PERFORMANCE,
DON’T LOOK NOW & WALKABOUT. It’s not my aesthetic, but
it’s all very interesting.

P.S. Yr issue of Tottel’s (Larry’s too) is going to go

to a form I used in the first cpl of #s of printing on
one side only. I’ve been considering my own reponses to
Bezoar & Tens, two other journals wch have adopted the
Tottel’s format & find myself very dissatisfied w/ the
way the 2-sided page looks when stapled in the corner.
T16 (for wch you shld send work, by the way, & very soon)
will have a cover & everything, look sorta like FATHAR
or something like that. & after that, who knows. No more
newsletters tho. Maybe one or 2 little chapbooks a year,
dunno.

Write!

Love,

Ron

————

25. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews (10/12/75)

Dear Bruce --

boxed in for time again, resorting to notes for what I’d

much rather spend a few hours over beer, bourbon to get
said. Havent spoken to Rae in a wk, Melnick in five wks.
See people like George Mattingly, Clay Fear half by acci-
dent, get things said in passing. I’m taking the first
wk of November off in order to get yr issue of Tottel’s
printed & Larry’s ready for press. Also to begin sorting
124  The Language Letters

process on the CC # for Margins, to see what I now need

to go after by way of rounding out. Acker’s 3rd Lautrec
in the mail yesterday but no chance to look at it yet,
also McAleavey’s new one from Ithaca House. I hear (from
Kathy) that you & she met via Barbara’s auspices (tho
she, Kathy, sez you didnt get much chance to talk). I met
Pat Jones, friend of Barbara, the other night. If you get
the chance to meet her, do so. Great head on her shoul-
ders.

I know it’s been a while since I sent you (or anyone) new
works. I’m working on 4 pieces that ought to take me until
at least the new year to have ready to go anywhere. People
will have to be patient. There are things in the writing I
have to work, sort out.

I’m reading at Folsom Prison on the 23rd, wch will be a

real joy (get the work-work schizophrenia out of the way
for once). Antin suggests that Michael Davidson wants to
schedule me for San Diego next spring. Wch wld be nice.
It’s been 13 years since I’ve been south of Santa Barbara.
Trailways has a half-price fare for the unemployed so if
CPHJ shld fold for $$ anytime soon, I’d take a vacation of
2 or 3 wks to go to NYC almost at once.

I loved your piece in World Politics, read it closely &

got a lot out of it (I very much appreciated the sense of
risk you are involved in to bring in so-called aesthetic
vocabularies to apply to these perspectives). (Careerism
is obviously not yr god, but integrity, that’s fine to
see.)

I’m real hyper tonite, chainsmoking cigars. My personal

life has recently become much involved w/ one of my house-
mates, it’s been very intense, I’m learning a lot abt my
self & others. Saw Bonnie Raitt last night, also a guy by
the name of Tom Waits who’s a zap comix version of Hoagy
Carmichael w/ a voice that makes Leon Russell sound like
Joan Baez.
 The Language Letters 125

Am sending Osawatomie 3 by separate cover, having gotten

abt a dozen to distribute.36

If I dont respond to letters in greater depth, it’s not

because they dont raise issues in the head, but a matter
of time. I have made a decision to move to NYC, but it may
be 20 months or so before I get to it. Things to do, etc.

Love,

Ron

————

26. Charles Bernstein to Ron Silliman (1/28/76),

excerpt

New York. hm. you say you’d like to do the scene in some
definitive way. i’d be interested in yr perceptions and
feelings on a day to day basis: its inside (or the illu-
sion of inside), its constitution, etc. what does seem
to be going on are some spectacular performances -- rbt
wilson, richard foreman’s ontological hysteric thtr,
glass, reich, andy degroat, laura dean, etc. performance
can be very seductive, as if you need a performance com-
ponent to get yr wrk across, to get seen -- wch over-
shadows, if you let it, the value in non-performative
wrks. for me, what’s most striking, attracting, abt ny
is the variety of the scenes (& not just artistic) -- &
all the movies.

went to reznikoff's funeral, abt five blocks from my apt.

they’re closing all the manhattan branch libraries, but,

36. Osawatamie, a quarterly magazine published by the Weather Underground Organi-

zation (WUO), began in March 1975 and continued for six issues. In addition to news about
anti-imperialist struggles around the world, each issue included editorials, book reviews,
and a “Toolbox” section, in which communist ideas were explained in ordinary language.
126  The Language Letters

as jerry brown might point out, do the poor need to read

-- better to meditate.

will send you the wrtng i talked about as soon as i

re-type it.

oh: the bruce andrews selection you made gave me more

insight into his wrk than anything else i’d seen. i got a
clear sense of what each poem meant, what was happening in
it, & the progression of one to the other was helpful in
this respect. previously, i’d found his stuff a little bit
too much pure design/puzzle. but not here. & the eigner.

keep in touch.

Charles

————

27. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews (3/16/76)

Dear Bruce,

you may remember me (he sd). thot i owd you a note, checkd
my backlog of unanswerd mail -- seems you’re the one behind
(right now anyhow). HOW ARE YOU MAN? between work flu going
to san diego to read meeting antin putting the margins
ish on CC (just now getting it together, reading new book
Polaroid as part of the process, the best CC yet), working
on lots of writing projects, it’s all hazy here, too much
info, too much monkey buziness. reading fred jameson at
last. reread wittgenstein’s Tractatus (wch has had a tre-
mendous clarifying impact on my thinking). one new writ-
ing project is aRb,37 an extension of Chinese Notebook
wch goes miles beyond that original space, lots of work
on Sunset Debris, The Fly-Bottle, L (my perpetual poem),

37. Silliman explains that aRb, which is also called the “Horizon” in these letters, is a pre-
decessor to “The New Sentence.”
 The Language Letters 127

2197, Ordinary Language, plus other stuff. saw braxton,

holly near last wkend. wanna see Taxi Driver. i hear tell
that Elizabeth Press is gonna fold up. heard creeley read
his selected poems, almost in toto (grenier edited it, a
brilliant stroke, the best reading of RC i’ve ever seen, a
major analysis of what in RC matters). you can see what my
problem is. i got all this stuff to tell you. it gets com-
pressed, so much is lost, damnit. my relationship w/ peggy
has grown nicely, but whether it can survive a move east-
ward i dont think either of us knows yet. learning to play
the guitar (very primitive as yet). grenier is moving here
next month. people do write letters, why not You?

love,

Ron

————

28. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman (4/23/76)

dear Ron --

well, ah . . . clearing of guilt/throat, perhaps a while

since I wrote (Ellen read your postcard, arrived today --
when I was, curiously as it turned out & Scout’s honor,
going to finally give myself the time & space -- of all
sorts -- to write you -------- & said you said I hadnt
been giving you enough attention lately: not precisely
your wording, but a true fact).

Much neglect & with not a whole lot to show for it, except
perhaps a rare modicum of psychic balance in the Venus
Flytrap City, & good notices at school. Busy busy was a
bee, but at least s/he got some honey generated. Owell:
overload has been the name of this game, with appropriate
stigmata imagery.

Teaching, given my perfectionist proclivities, has turned

128  The Language Letters

out to occupy a huge amount of energy & thought -- teach-

ing 3 courses per semester & 5 of the 6 have been new (as
to be contrasted with 2 new ones next year, one after
that, etc.: to indicate -- in theory -- the uniqueness of
the “1st year” blitz). I think the overall consequence
has been that with the remaining time I’ve been unable to
responsibly allocate my energy & tone down my aspirations
-- &, as result, scurry around, much social activity, a
marvelous amt of time spent w/ Ellen in this, her first,
year of not working, so long walks in vast inviting Cen-
tral Park, non-stop conversations & explorations of feel-
ings. Also renewing, after 4 years away, my close friend-
ship w/ Michael, which has remained an endearing source
of attention & high regard [BA annotates: the only thing
comparable has been my feelings about you -- even given my
out-to-pasture track record as correspondent]. [BA anno-
tates: also, a prose sequence, VOWELS, was just published
as a book by O Press (Michael Lally’s press) & a good copy
(many were damaged) will be coming to you soon. Was there
any response to my Tottel’s issue that you got?]

Plus an entrée into the fairly complex (& heavy w/

social-climbing) world of the NY poetry scene. [BA anno-
tates: being a scholar & w/in an encompassing relation-
ship gives me some ego-distance from those games luckily.
Some.] Tons of readings -- though only a fraction of those
available -- ditto w/ new music concerts, film, also mov-
ies, jazz (there not even scratching the surface, although
discovered a Columbia Univ. FM station w/out ((LITHUA-
NIANS TURNED OUT TODAY AT A UNITY RALLY)) commercials,
& with the best bluegrass, 6 hours of classical music
-- 3 of it 20th century, & 8 hours of jazz, 3 of it “new
thing,” daily, so I’ve not felt as much need to be fur-
ther barraged [BA annotates: Has also eliminated my desire
for buying records until summer, when school, & school
radio, is over] -- going to hear Ted Curson next weekend
though, Cecil’s old trumpeter, also w/ Mingus/Dolphy ear-
lier). [BA annotates: heard Steve Lacy in a solo concert
last month, which was like a bolt of inspiration.] Been
 The Language Letters 129

learning about post-modern dance as well (Lucinda Childs,

Laura Dean, others, many working from a grid-like mini-
malist sensibility much in vogue, with S. Reich & Phil
Glass the foci musically: personally I still come closer
to the sensibilities of jazz, reminding me of a discussion
we once had). Theatre. Literally has there been too much
here? It confuses me greatly, for in Boston & DC I was
able to sustain a (meager, albeit) feeling of (NEW THING
JAZZ show on, 6 p.m. -- hi Ron!) going to much that almost
everything that would be of importance to me in the arts,
here hopelessly it places itself beyond my ken & yet I’ve
not accepted it, grrrr: frustration. I see myself slowly
coming to accept it, however, but this 1st year has been
one of “entry” -- how to juggle my spectatorial role, new
social involvements (Christ you go to a reading & see too
damn many people you want to relate to -- whether to talk
to, flirt with, be acknowledged by, whatever: boggles,
until familiarity breeds, as it has [BA inserts: begun
to]. Not to mention that after being very reclusive in DC
& Cambridge (actually there was little choice in either
place, since no one was there, but...) I’ve come presque
full circle & tantalized by an active social life for the
first time -- even in college I hermitted it for the large
measure, the largest measure. Except for the constant of a
woman. What else in this medley: trying w/out any success
to write an occasional letter [BA annotates: I do get a
postcard off now & then: no prizes there], stay in touch
w/ people (on these scores the year has been a disaster: I
begin to see one reason NY people have appeared exclusiv-
ist: the stimulus here becomes so intense that it allows
little room for outreach), do some writing (almost nil)
[BA annotates: my monograph, Public Constraint and Amer-
ican Policy in Vietnam, 65 pp., I’ll send you a copy of,
soon. Just read proofs this week. Real pleased -- it’s
sufficiently “professional” for a change], keep up w/
reading a few current things, getting ready to devote time
& effort to finishing Empire and Society this summer &
fall, took a job this spring as rapporteur at the 1980s
Project of the Council on Foreign Relations, to see what
130  The Language Letters

the ruling class is planning for our future -- a grimmer

& duller task than I’d hoped, prepared a paper (from ear-
lier work) on “Explaining and Understanding State Action”
which I presented up in Toronto, staying there for 5 days
with Steve McCaffery (who does the TRG report in Open Let-
ter & occasional reviews, etc. there -- do you know his
Dr. Saddhu’s Muffins book, or seen the Palmer review in
last issue (best I’ve seen on Palmer) or earlier pieces
therein? [BA annotates: McCaffery’s someone you should
know of -- I’ve mentioned you to him & I hope he gets in
touch w/ you.] We’d corresponded some last year & he turns
out to be a thoroughly delightful guy. & I had the best
talks about writing I’ve managed all year -- he’s doing
a long piece on Coolidge & my own work for OL, & I think
a book of music if all goes well: Toronto maintaining a
pleasantly energetic scene w/ Steve & Barrie Nichol (B.P.)
holding up the knowledgeable avant wing. The paper also
went over well, & it was curious seeing my “profession”
all assembled there, at the International Studies Asso-
ciation convention. An older & dull bunch, mostly, but
Charles Lipson, my only good friend from Harvard came to
share my hesitations (he was the Government dept.’s only
other radical while I was there -- now he’s all alone).

What else, this gets crazy -- am taking a T’ai Chi class at

the swimming pool Ellen & I joined just down the street,
& we’re about to take up tennis (since NY’s courts are
about 2 blocks from here in Central Park: AIR!). Added to
all that have been weekend long visits by just about all
friends we made in DC & Boston, at one point or another,
which ends up wiping out work time possibilities -- then
(perusing a calendar), grading exams, time spent w/ a few
other young people in my department, the ballet, eve-
nings w/ Clarke (my best friend from college, who lives in
town -- as does Ellen’s oldest & best friend from home,
so it’s complex), weekend long radio festivals of Les-
ter Young, Monk & Bud Powell (in each case including all
their recorded music) keeping me glued to the tubes (the
loss of our TV in moving has been a blessed transformation.
 The Language Letters 131

I did spend too much time watching it in Cambridge as an

escape [BA inserts: I think] from the rigors of my dis-
sertation, but . . . gosh . . . all those delighting 30s
& 40s auteur movies!), kite flying at deserted dune rid-
den beach, Twyla Tharp, spending a week cadging the IRS
out of a pot of money by itemizing everything on our taxes
(w/ my trusty & illuminating Tax Guide for College Profes-
sors), & then, last weekend, (Coleman Hawkins playing “Blue
Moon”!) (Lady’s Choice!) to top off my rising excitement
about writing -- went down to DC to give a reading, which
was a smash hit, my only reading of the year (though one
is coming up at a bar in Barbara’s neighborhood w/ Hannah
Weiner on June 10), & a delightful occasion all ’round.
Even the trickier pieces went over nicely. “Blue” had them
dancing in the aisles, etc. (well, actually. . .). Plus a
4am party w/ my first cocaine, reggae, dancing & et al.
Made another close friend there in Doug Lang, a British
ex-patriot, ex-husband of Andrea Wyatt (Sam Charters’ for-
mer & Eigner’s bibliographer). [BA annotates: He’s also an
appreciator of your work. Had Mohawk on his bed.] The 2nd
weekend-long marathon of bracing talks about poetry & jazz
(with Doug). Also buoyed up by an occasional reading -- the
most triumphant ones being Basil Bunting’s (migod! -- one
set of Briggflatts -- he was totally convincing, though, as
we once had a back & forth on, operating w/in textures of
greater resonance to me than thee) & Coolidge’s. I’d never
heard him read before; he presented work, impeccably, from
the, now, 3 or 4 or ? hundred page ms. a portion of which
is in This 6 (parenthetically, I had another good set of
words w/ Barry on his visit here & liked him a lot, though
our styles differ highly. He saw his way into my newer work
& wrote flatteringly of it -- he’s got a ms. of a Sonnets
sequence you might want to take a peek at. Which reminds
me. Did you ever receive the work I sent back in the win-
ter for Tottel’s. I’d hoped for some response, whatever.)
It was the, arguably, finest reading I’d ever heard, &
admittedly I’ve not heard all that many. Amazing variabil-
ity of formal elements w/ the overall structuring a preci-
sion job. Hearing it live made something more of music from
132  The Language Letters

it, the swells. Not disco. Transformational. In addition

this spring: intriguing off-base reading by Wieners, visit
w/ Jonathan Williams & Tom Meyer on their days here, New
Year’s reading at St. Mark’s by everyone, recent appear-
ance by Kathy Acker (not inspiring -- I’ve not been able
to penetrate her social surface on the occasions I’ve been
with her, though that may be attributable to most anything
-- in this hectic scene, though, she comes across as far
more distracted & mercurial in her interpersonal relations
than necessary). Barbara read, also, a few weeks ago, pre-
senting a few chapters in her “novel” which I gather she’s
had some real success with -- in terms of publishing house
interest, etc. Not anything of real interest to me: clot-
ted overly-condensed language squashing a ribald narrative
w/ some leanings toward sophomorism. Real curious after all
her changes. [BA annotates: It got a good response from a
young receptive audience, tho.] She’s been a great source
of warmth & energy for Ellen & I here, though -- even if
she’s 10 times busier than everyone else. Last night heard
Ted Berrigan (open, heartfelt & I saw into it as a clari-
fication) & Alice Notley (sustainedly overrated). [BA anno-
tates: Had never before liked much of Berrigan. Feel like
now I could.]

Well, that’s, finally, “the news” -- apart from a gigantic

amount of thinking & I’ve thunk myself out this year.

I now cast my appreciative gaze over my backlog of fine

letters from Ron “The Fly-Bottle” Silliman. Hey! Hey hey
hey! Mostly I apologize for hopeless inactivity on the
correspondence-level & pledge, my fingers idly crossed
beyond my back jeans loop, to do better.

The CC issue of MARGINS should take its triumphal place,

though, feeling a great commonality with you in this
regard, it doubtless was given far more care, extrava-
gantly disproportionate, in fact, than it will be by MAR-
GIN’s typical readership, who, if their editorial policies
are any sign & they may well not be, are a flaccid lot.
It’s an infuriating mag overall -- the disparity between
 The Language Letters 133

its potential and its nervous poorly-done quilt-like fab-

ric of triviality remains all too great, determinedly
great. Reminds me that today, waiting for a reading by
Waldman & Maureen Owen at Fordham of all places -- one
which never materialized -- I went to the library and
looked thru the last 12 months of Poetry. Shocking beyond
recall, I was sickened, both by the selections & the
repressive & wrong-headed reviews. If they had more impor-
tance, they’d be worth actively resisting. Civil disobedi-
ence. Pretense as . . . evil?

This, on the reverse, is a page, rejected, from a 25 pp.

sequence, ONLY. I do wish you were in NY, Ron -- it would
be a major source of inspiration for me.

Following up on a comment here & there.

How did you find Antin? Jameson’s new project! Yes, Pola-
roid -- it plus the 3 Mayers (Kulchur’s [Poetry] yet to
come) making for an efflorescence of goodies this season.
There are so many unanswered questions I have about the
direction of people’s work, accentuated very much by being
in NY & being confronted in the most favorable settings w/
work I’d not paid any attention to previously. Thus some
heightened effort (compared to my blissful earlier iso-
lation) in sorting out. Besides which I feel both a new
openness to a great deal of it but w/out time to do much
about it. I’ve met no one here that has what I’d call com-
patible discrimination.

Grenier doing RC Select-a-thon: yes it would be a brilliant

stroke. Is it being published somewhere? If only you & I &
Bob & ? or some combination thereof could have done the same
for Larry E. Elizabeth Press to fold: my 1st reaction was oh
now I can get some of their high priced spread at accessi-
ble prices. Guitar! “Play guitar” is a moving step in T’ai
Chi. Did Grenier arrive & how is he, & how are you & Barry
getting along? Grenier one person that never really warmed
up to me or my work I fear, though I dont rule it out for-
ever. Crags & peaks, hills & valleys. Deft tap. AND PEGGY
134  The Language Letters

& being in, as we used to idly refer to it, LOVE?? Details

await. “really the best thing which has happened to me in
many years” -- that sounds like it, whatever, the right sen-
sation. This is speeding long. Yet it’s also 2 days after
I started, with Taxi Driver, All the President’s Men, book
browsing, walks, a social (not socialist) brunch, an upcom-
ing party & Hitchcock’s Family Plot all intervening.

On to the next page!

Well I’d most like to hear particulars about the structure

of

1. aRb
2. Sunset Debris
3. The Fly-Bottle
4. L
5. 2197
6. Ordinary Language
7. “other stuff”
8. Sailboat38

could I be so
PRIVILEGED as to
gather some exclusive, or not.
information
re
those
extended efforts?

That would be very important at this end.

Sorry to have pooped out about the Margins thing -- the

fall being a total blitz. My guilt remains non-pareil.

Am curious abt the Eureka Review piece: it certainly was

not me who said (referring to the “word as abstract

38. The reference is unknown. Silliman writes, “A mystery to me too.”

 The Language Letters 135

quantity” line) it. And this slush about the “Berke-

ley School” flies in the face of one of the cru-
cial things about our moment: that it is transmitted
largely through print, not locality.

What is boundary 2 doing? & what is the piece based on (&

who is he?). Layzer’s concept of origin of time. One of
aforementioned? And good to hear of Barthes’ continuing
appeal -- Pleasure of the Text (fine title) one I’ve
not yet gotten to.

Rushing through rather breezily.

This becomes a new page.

Am flattered to hear of the complication of the heart,

& Peggy -- I would so much love to spend some time
together w/ you, or you two, or you too.

This is belated, all of it, but it bespeaks of it.

To just let you know I still love you & your presence
in my head. And that, & this seems ironically sec-
ondary, you are a constant source of inspiration
& pleasure as a writer. Only Bernadette & CC are
(& myself?) even within the same tier, in terms of
interest, & only that group of all those under 50
(under Creeley, Eigner, Ashbery). [BA annotates:
This is a measured judgment: the others so decid-
edly dross or . . . not fully charged with it.]
Which means that I really feel you’ve created a
body of work already deserving mark/greatness --
& shit/holy shit/all those years ahead & feeling
right by your side. An affair of the heart.

Doubtless

Bruce

P.S. I’ll get back now to being a writer to you.

136  The Language Letters

————

29. Ron Silliman to Charles Bernstein (7/26/76)

Dear Charles,

seems possible that, going thru my unanswered letters

pile, I didn’t get back to yrs of say some 7 wks ago. Lord
knows I been in crazy enuf places the last few wks, but
when I first got yrs I recall very clear image in head to
get back quickly. Never been one of those cagy types who
make carbons of their letters, so verification not possi-
ble. Well, shit, anyway, I meant to dot dot dot.

I leave my job in 5 wks. I’d thot at first to use that as

a chance to go to NYC, but to do so wld mean having to
work my ass off the moment I got there, while staying here
means literally kicking back a few months, so here I do be
for the foreseeable future. Other than a Great Big Argu-
ment w/ Watten, life here has stabilized, tho I’m still
just gritting my teeth thru the last few wks of the Job.
W/ Rae Armantrout, David Melnick, Davey Doyle (Melnick’s
lover) & Morgan Wines, proofed the final CC galleys. It
looks fine, a very broad but clear collection (like,
Clark’s NYC buddies, Padgett & Saroyan, have their chance,
as does Alan Davies whose take is very Naropa, plus Met-
calf & Dawson giving the view of Blk Mtn, but yrself, Wat-
ten, Grenier & myself are the works wch really get down
to the issues). I finished SUNSET DEBRIS (a copy of wch
is soon to be on its way to you) & gave a reading of the
first third of it at Intersection w/ Ken Irby. Reading
was really a great success: a full house of poets & even
such strange types as Jack Hirschman liked it (in fact,
Momo’s Press has asked to see the ms. & I got an invite to
read in Berkeley as a result as well, so not a bad nite’s
work).

Been having an interesting correspondence w/ Steve

McCaffery, a British poet living in Toronto, part of the
 The Language Letters 137

Four Horseman performance group (bpNichol wld be the other

name there you might recognize), very much into Sauss-
ure, Derrida, Lacan, tho his orientation is much closer
say to Mac Low than mine (not that I don’t like Jackson’s
work, as I do, but I think his focus is procedure, where
my procedures are merely strategies to get at the language
w/). I hit him w/ some of the ideas I’m working w/ in aRb
including my idea that poetry is a relation, of the schema

(a poem, P, is a vocabulary, v, processed by a set of

rules, r, variously limited or extended by intention(s),
i, this denominator being a key term, not that far from
what Spicer wlda called the invisible, or Olson energy, an
important element of wch involves poetry as social behav-
ior, each poet having their conceptualization of poetry
in wch each new poem intuitively “fits” ((an analogy wld
be molecules of gas in a vacuum: each poem, or at another
level, each poet, wld be a molecule, none wld have a view
of the whole, schools, or the work of major individuals
wld be represented by denser areas, etc.))): a matrix.

Idea that poetry is a relation, in a matrix, wch we can

see only in one of its transformations (that is, the rela-
tion never occurs in a pure state): poem as concept, as
the act of writing or projective, as text, as the act of
reading or affective, as after-image of memory of the poem
(the least considered but most common state & the one wch
contributes most to the matrix).

Wch theory, primitive as it sounds, explains so far as I

can see any poem, leaves open the relative adequacy of
various sets of rules & vocabs (that is, does not elimi-
nate ideas of good or bad poems) & wld exclude non-­
poems
w/ similar surface features (a Dylan song or display
advertising’s use of language). It was McCaffery’s ques-
tioning wch finally made it possible for me to hook these
various models, wch aRb had been exploring sort of side by
side, into this formulation.
138  The Language Letters

Read a ton of Bernadette Mayer’s work: Studying Hunger,

Memory, Poetry &, in This 7, “We Plough the Roads.” So,
finally, yrs after reading Memory I do have some sense of
the basic concerns of her work, tho I’m still not con-
vinced in any final way, tho, in Hunger at least, I have
a sense of the transitions being the vocabulary of work
almost. I’d preshiate it if you (or anyone for that mat-
ter) wld sit me down & explain what you’re seeing there.

Thinking vaguely of a long work to be based on Fibonacci

to work on when I leave my job. On top of all my other
projects (tho w/ Sunset Debris typed, w/ sitting up,
standing, taking steps all down in notebk form, w/ The
Fly-Bottle 80% typed & the CC # behind me, I almost feel
as tho the # of projects is beginning at last to get back
into control). Key to this project wld be (1) repetition,
(2) sentence types or rather language unit types, (3)
transformations -- thinking at this pt of a range say of
250 pp. but this means a single line of over 100 pages at
some pt, w/ each phrase at least posited by a procedure:
never tried anything that complex before, so it will be a
challenge.

Saw Ray’s Distant Thunder: fine film. Saw Mystery of

Kasper Hauser, wch is fluff. Also very good is Grey Gar-
dens (wch is abt language, abt what happens to the lan-
guage of these 2 women living together alone all those
years) & the Roeg film The Man Who Fell to Earth, wch is
great.

Gonna go watch the Olympics now, so write,

Ron

P.S. McCaffery’s address is 52 Claxton Blvd, Toronto M6C

1L8; you shld send him some work or something, RS

————
 The Language Letters 139

30. Charles Bernstein to Ron Silliman (8/15/76)

Ron,

coming to an end of my vacation here: quiet, lots of rain,

much rdng.

yr poetry equation, etc., seemed a focus of much of the

discussion we’ve had, tho i’m not sure what yr getting at
in trying to get -- what? -- a final unambiguous defi-
nition of poetry, i.e., exactly what use do you intend
to put it to (well, of course aRb). & still the wildness
is in the letter “i,” wch is essential, the magic of the
equation. that “i” is just what i sd a while back was
what separated Mac Low & myself. he seems to be advocat-
ing dropping that denominator as expressionism/ego, etc.
& wch you reiterate in saying Mac Low is interested in
“procedure” while yr procedures are “merely strategies to
get at the language with.” of course Jackson becomes some-
what two dimensional in this since he doesnt really advo-
cate such a strict position anymore. i’ve had innumerable
discussions in wch the charge of “alienating” comes up in
respect to denseness, inscrutable reference, etc. -- “it
doesnt relate to me” -- esp. tho stuff like Andrews’ syl-
lable work -- & i say: well, i am interested in the pos-
sibilities of relationship (here, you know, we’re onto an
ethical discussion, but that’s okay, i’m ready for it)
-- & these programmes provided the occasion -- are the
focus -- that lets all that “personal” stuff you think
is being obscured out, that it frees the mind to a max-
imum awakening/awareness (zen-like in its use of disci-
pline, attending, etc.) -- & that the self-contained thing
that results, its non-instrumentality (one of the “Signs
of the Particularities”) has much to do with my/one’s/
yr relation to other things in the world. for instance it
says something abt the difference betw gesture (theatri-
calization) & substance. but -- oh -- that “i”: “energy”,
the “invisible” & of course intention . . . can get to
“soul” & the like (de anima) -- & then the right side of
140  The Language Letters

yr equation is the old (mind/body) split. you might say

the numerator (v.r) & the denominator (i) cld be switched:
that the rules & vocabulary mediate the intention. shldnt
energy/soul emanate from within the others, be the glue,
cement, that wch makes words & rules cohere, makes mean-
ing -- so to say -- from just “dead” words. a popular con-
fusion, seems to me, is to take what yr calling energy
(spirit!) & give it the control of a formal convention
(of a rule, yes, it’s a confusion), i.e., by making deci-
sions on rules, transitions, vocabulary based on what is
supposed to be the look of energy, the invisible, natu-
ral flow, etc. it seems to me this has something to do
with the kinds of transitions in MEMORY. yr TYPING gets
me thinking abt this -- it’s a great piece! -- almost a
lesson in how to read as much as how to write. the planet
is defined. not an unlimited release of yr thoughts but
pointing to the place “thoughts” have in a form. so i
wrote the enclosed essay/poem on the natchural cause i was
struck by remembering people, incl Bernadette, who seemed
committed to the sanctity of handwriting as a nec part of
“tapping the flow,” wrtng.39 &, in contrast to yr TYPING,
this seems to sanctify as natural something wch is essen-
tially a procedural decision, even a genre decision. (if
i was going to explain what’s going on in -- & what’s so
great abt -- MEMORY I wld start here -- & then go on to
the concern with movement, frenetic city movement, with
transitions relying on an intuitive ((cacophonous, i.e.,
betw Taylor & Jarrett)) jazz like flow.) in addition to
an aversion to typewriter composition as a technical
impediment, this natchural ideology is also marked by an
avoidance of commas within these “movement-of-conscious-
ness” sentences -- because they, say my proposed & actual
imitators of Mayer (& Kerouac for example), break up the
natural flow. so that’s where STRAY STRAWS, STRAW MEN got
started (because i am after all arguing with straw men,

39. “Stray Straws and Straw Men,” published in L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, supplement 1

(June 1980), collected in Charles Bernstein, Content’s Dream: Essays 1975–1984 (Los Angeles:
Sun and Moon, 1986), 40–49.
 The Language Letters 141

projecting my own chimera, & also because poetry is in a

sense reconstructing the human with straw, inert matter --
you get the impression that the movements of the personal
life are what poetry is abt, w/o the dawning that, at the
least, it is the syntacticalizing of consciousness (per-
ception)). so, let me know what you think -- & any ideas
for where to publish it. (i think this is a final version,
tho wld like to add footnotes & will def change it if
someone gives me an idea how to get it out better.) (seems
an appropriate thing to introduce myself to McCaffery, so
will prob send it on to him as well.)

when i left ny things were still happening --, & just at

the end of june Bruce & then Ted Greenwald gave great
rdngs at Sobossek’s (tho Bruce’s rdng was marred by an
unpleasantly noisy bar crowd & irresponsible plng by the
organizers). my own rdng at St. Mark’s went well, the
reaction very positive. i saw Jerry Rothenberg when he was
in rochester & took a look at the ms. to his anth called
The BIG Jewish BK, wch, in spite of the name, has some
interesting stuff. he’s moving to san diego (430 naiad
street, encinidas, ca 92024) as of now.

i hope just because you’re not moving to ny right away

doesnt mean you wont at least visit. i’m sure a variety of
people (Susan & i included) cld put you up -- we’re think-
ing of moving (back into one place for both of us) & so
starting soon we’ll have to decide westside vs downtown,
loft vs apt (Susan needs space -- tho all summer she’s
been doing photograms & other abstract photographic compo-
sitions in our tiny bathroom), etc. i hate moving.

so -- so -- so --

Charles

P.S. Sunset Debris, i suspect, sits in my apt with the

rest of my mail for the last few wks. look fwrd to rdng
it.
142  The Language Letters

————

31. Ron Silliman to Charles Bernstein (9/3/76), excerpt

so here i am man, my first chance to write. i was really

pleased by yr letter & the article. yr right of course in
yr description of my work as “composed very explicitly
under various conditions” but i dont think you bring for-
ward what underlies that: that assumption i have that lan-
guage = the human (wch i’ve writ before in places). the
melanesians have a phrase go da kamo, wch characterizes
that wch is human in everything and wch the melanesians,
when exposed to french missionaries w/ their biblework,
translated into parole! anyway, poetry for me is the art
of language, exploring just that, all projects are aimed
at working toward a deeper investigation of that (art for
me more exploratory in this sense than is so-called ratio-
nal investigation of say linguistics or language philoso-
phy or psycholinguistics, all of wch worlds interest me a
lot), what the devil is the human?

[. . . .]

in another sense, another level, i see poetry as not just

my making objects in a vacuum, but all these poems (poets)
contributing to a pool of work, the poems communicating,
a social process (this is to some extent a theory of con-
flict, a dialectics of poetry as collective behavior, not
individual, but one wch allows a view into the individ-
ual, even to the individual term in any given work.) so
what i want is [ . . . ]: to write this poem, aRb [and] to
create a new language in wch the poem can be understood
(well beyond the truly primitive system of discussing the
poem wch now exists; primitive because there are two lan-
guages offered any one of us now writing: one, that of
writers, of wch Olson and Creeley have done the most seri-
ous work prior to our generation, wch is a crude model at
best, centered in one transformation; the other, worse,
language is that of the critics and academes, who are
fatally mis-skewed by the fact of their seeing everything
 The Language Letters 143

thru analysis of the act of reading more than writing,

these being different activities w/ different orientations
toward the subject-object/self-other event.

————

my crying
Mao dies

32. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman (9/13/76)

Dear Ron --

sitting right down to write my man a letter, w/ Neil

Young’s melancholy in the back -- setting me aright. All
right. More than anything getting your strong (as with
pride it emanates out) letter tonight, more than anything
it brought me w/in awareness distance of (“trying to make
the best of my time” / “only love can break your heart”
-- fucking blow me away w/ the coincidence of those lines
which now ring in my head as I think) my near-complete col-
lapse & irresponsibility to myself.40 And to you. This hurt
very much, but it was a well-placed & heart-felt kick to
my butt: I sensed in your letter that you didn’t even know
you were doing this, but it came thru anyway. Articulating
your sense of frustration at my not having written you w/
any meaningful regularity -- & therefore your sense of car-
ing about what I do (this also coming through in commenting
on my job, etc.) moved me deeply & guiltily, embarrassedly.
Sometimes I feel like I’m getting thru life only by remain-
ing determinedly on its surface; other times as though my
voracious appetite for getting involved or interested in
things lends itself to a very distracted superficiality &
conventional way of being. Plus frustrations constantly
about ACHIEVEMENT, which has been a life-long obsession
I’m afraid & one that flummoxes me yet (whereas I seem to
have managed to achieve a secure intimacy & affection o.k.

40. The letter to which Andrews is referring has been lost.

144  The Language Letters

-- so maybe it’s really been the latter that’s been of REAL

cathected import to my life, w/ such an intensity that
I’ve managed it? Uncertain). I still am very distracted by
what other people have achieved, through not (as you say
of Barry) by them as people, or exampled life-styles, or
even by what they might do for me. Just, in esse, by what
I haven’t yet [but] could have done, or, futuristically,
what I might but am unlikely to do, or worse, am unlikely
to be able to do. Very little sense of perspective on these
things -- like, unable to soothingly say, Bruce you’re
only 28 & have done this that th’other & etc. Impatient/
Voracious (voration -- coined?) As in: “hey man, what’s
your voration?” Häagen-daz coffee ice cream, right here.
But this usually has to do with writing, lack of momentum
right now plus lack of response of a sort (from other writ-
ers) that may be impossible to expect plus lack of general
sense of stature (related to the previous) plus (related
to the momentum &, at times, to my great admiration for
your own work, etc.) worries about (which may sound silly
or whack-o) being left at the starting gate -- outpaced --
“beached” -- transcended -- belittled -- whatever.

This then gets coupled w/ recurrent disquietude (actually all

these things amount to vague unease rather than full-fledged
“worries” or “anxieties” -- I’m probing very deeply here
& doubtless, in uncovering streams, am exaggerating their
role) about my overall intellectual work, scholarly work,
academic work, knowledge, articulation, etc. (Again, this
may very much seem like a destructive concern, but, sheep-
ish to admit this around literati, my wishes here have much
more than careerism or academic conventionalism to revolve
around. I’ve not yet rid myself of a strong wish to do vastly
major scholarly work virtuoso-like, on the order of Moore’s
Social Origins or Williams’ Contours of American History or
Genovese’s Roll Jordan Roll. And beside the contradictory
demands, & jealousies of time, I’m just not sure I have it
in me. And concerned about what it would mean to give up the
desire (which has been something of an organizing & moti-
vating principle for me as a social scientist -- where I see
others pursuing scholarship as an incidental social function,
 The Language Letters 145

as a “keeping their hand in,” as accumulation of resumé for

tenure or professional advancement, as generated by their
teaching, etc.). And what I’ve done so far, while certainly
“impressive” in some unspecifiable lame degree for someone
my age blah blah blah, is such amateurish vague stuff. (I’m
sure this colored my reactions to your own analytic probes in
Chinese Notebook, Performance, etc.). Then if I truly want to
feel put upon, I can just think about Wittgenstein.

This is all something of an explanation -- but this solid

lack of reassurance about my intellectual work & its
potential has been disquieting -- ever since 1975, when I
got good responses from people like Ellsberg & Chomsky &
Zinn, etc. for some work, got a few pieces accepted for
very “prestigious” publication while still a grad student
(the Sage book, the World Politics article -- especially
the latter, which was unheard of for a student -- i.e.,
never before done & only once since: this spring, by
Charles Lipson, my only close friend in grad school & the
only other socialist in the department), followed by very
disheartening experience seeing jobs slip thru my fingers
& then at Fordham being pretty out of touch w/ things. So,
back w/ just me & my constant (often self-denigrating)
comparisons w/ others in print. Plus I feel the deadly
pall of job-security worries added on to what would other-
wise by very pure, almost juvenile-ly pure, dreams of the
Big Rock Candy Mountain Book (or lifetime of them) in the
sky. And “what they’re doing in the field,” etc.

11pm, just tucked Ellen in -- & now to pour myself a glass

of wine-water-and-ice (out of beer, my usual nightcap).
Got home at 10, from 1st day of school, full day, includ-
ing evening graduate class, exhausted & keyed up. It went
very well. But more on that, later.

Anyway, these things have been circling around me this

summer, while doing research & thinking about the Vietnam
book -- which, at all points seems to open out on a dozen
façades. So poignantly aware of its incompleteness -- &
what will be its incompleteness. O.
146  The Language Letters

That, plus a desire, not particularly a healthy one, to get

a job at a better school that I’d feel committed to, wanting
to stay at & build up the sort of personal ties there that
would signal that: so this intersects my occasional sense of
inadequacy w/ some cross-referencing at what is, very much
in fact, a competitive group of people in my field who are
busy doing what is required. Hasn’t made me want to trim
my sails politically (like the Frankfurt School did w/ its
euphemisms in their NY based work in the 1940s: Martin Jay’s
Dialectical Imagination instructive on that) -- or, I should
say, ideologically, in my writing -- but it’s been confusing
just the same. I’m not at all tied in w/ the academic Marx-
ist subculture (you mention being wary of, in your letter
-- “almost as convoluted a deformation as the correct party
crowd”) & have never been. And don’t really know why. Just
no desire -- probably indicating conflicting urges blocking
each other. Partly, I don’t feel comfortable being tied to
that one vocabulary, though at times it feels like coward-
ice on my part to not feel comfortable in such a way. I sup-
pose like most things I mistake for deliberate life-choices,
it’s a question of socialization. I’ve never known many &
almost none are political scientists or int’l relations peo-
ple (economists, sociologists, historians, etc.). Feel like
I could “search it out,” but. . . . So things don’t feel
like vocational compromises, though I’m afraid of that: I’ve
always been so close to the “official success” track that
it’s scary. As though only my diffidence keeps me off, more
than other things. Your saying that there’s a real possi-
bility my job could eventually destroy me as a writer (quite
a comment -- if somewhat offhandedly put!) certainly adds
to the fires of self-doubt. As for the theory absent from
much connection w/ practice: again, I think this is mostly
socialization & subculture, for I’ve never done any signifi-
cant political work. In fact, didn’t turn to the left until,
say, 1970-71, by which time the opportunities seemed some-
what less than generous. And again, was living, as ever, in
something of a peaceful social vacuum. Not proud of this,
any of this, but at least it means there’s no deterioration
of my inclinations: I’ve always been an armchair red & my
 The Language Letters 147

activism has been either ceremonial or conversational. But

it continues to rankle, as do almost all the other possi-
bilities I’m not using my energy to explore (whether it’s
performance/tape pieces, journalism, activism, socializing
in a more expansive way, sexual pluralism (=?!), energetic
responsible prompt correspondence, wilderness experience,
leisure, etc. etc.).

Like I have trouble sitting to concentrate on something w/

out being aware of what else is not being done . . . . . .
so much gets funneled into a weird escapist touch. And cer-
tain things, like correspondence for over a year & writing
projects for as long, just dropped out the bottom.

But I did get over the huge hump w/ correspondence & hope
in a week or two (once our income tax gets audited & get
my school life in order) to get back to some writing. And
to steadier work on Empire & Society. Mostly, largely, my
not writing (&, again, this outburst due in much measure
to your -- thank you -- being up front abt being disap-
pointed w/ me for not writing more & saying so & let-
ting a certain harshness get elicited around the edges of
your letter), was part of a general pattern of escapism
-- escape from demands (& that’s, I guess, what I meant
when I said it was hardest to write the important letters:
others required less anti-escapism). Also, possibly, your
own activities may’ve symbolized some things I was getting
distracted about & so I backed off some.
148  The Language Letters

ON to your letter & a few stray jottings (very stray, sans

doute).

Mostly glad to hear you have this free time: you, Bern­
stein & McCaffery, all at once, for several months. --
Ellen & I spent good eve w/ Charles & Susan last week
& felt good warm vibes there. Charles & I may turn out,
slowly, into good friends -- certainly I want to take
advantage of the stimuli of his concerns. Also, got won-
derful 3 page letter -- response (as I said, I’m reform-
ing) from Steve a few days back: a veritable treasure
trove of commentary, current events, etc. And rather
spacious letter from Barry, the 1st he’s ever written me
(again, a reply to mine): tortured syntax w/ a more open
sense to it. So I’m sad to hear of his “brink”-ness in
regard to this Anna Hartmann woman: scary, the demands of
imbalance & unbalance, somehow. Like -- what does “unpre-
dictableness” do to retrospectively color how we read a
shared past w/ someone like. How does this father/hate/
love thing (which can I guess be seen w/ Coolidge, etc.,
as you say) affect his dealings w/ peers? (My own father/
love/hate thing seems to work itself out in an anti-­
authority orientation at a general level & an attraction-­
yet-standbackishness in regard to older men -- which has
always been a handicap in my academic life, where almost
patrimonial relations are more common than my pure-­
laissez-faire orientation.) (SUM)

All you say of the last few months is close to home: I

hadnt realized you were suffering so much from the con-
sumption of the job. (I can see Sunset Debris as a strug-
gle -- but then, by doing so, it gets to places of an ana-
lytic depth that might’ve been haard otherwise to come to.
I want to think about this some more.)

Peggy rearriving! ------ what now (as in “what now, my

love?”). And Barry breaking down? And Darrell & Morgan
Wines alcoholics? And. . . . . (139 lbs!! -- how tall are
 The Language Letters 149

you). Here it’s 157 @ 6’ even. Yep, oomaloom.41 Is it,

but how to deal w/ these changes going every which way?
Tidy up, I guess. As for a trip east: dont know if you
could get the readings for $. Only likely one in NY is St.
Marks & that’s via Anne Waldman. I’ve not been able to.
But it pays $100. And maybe Corbett in Boston -- or ideas
from Perlman. And Washington wouldnt pay much. I think
it’d depend on knowing people in the schools -- & I dont.
But. . . .

Good to hear of Maximus V3 -- & do want to know about

Vowels. It’s been frustrating: almost no one’s bought it
(sent out a flyer to everyone I didnt send a copy to) &
few comments, following virtually none on the Tottel’s
14. And these are just the iceberg’s tip, just corners
of a total work. (That’s one envy I have of your, or
Coolidge’s, or Acker’s, way of proceeding -- more sequen-
tially it seems, & maybe w/ less need of response?)

As for Ray’s list -- I thought it ridiculously long. I’d

maybe think of: Silliman, Coolidge, Mayer, Grenier, Carl
Andre (pieces from the ’60s), DiPalma, Waldrops, Taggart,
Kyger, Acker, Lally, Greenwald, Palmer, Melnick, McCaffery,
Watten, Bernstein, Dreyer, Raworth possibly, myself.

We’re all too easy on those close to us (thus, Ray’s

inclusion of Slater). I would want to know what you say
about Acker -- and about Coolidge -- since (like Charles’
essay on the Natural), I think your ideas sparkle when
hinged on an articulable body of distinctions & compari-
sons in works. I will get out Performance & say specif-
ically what hit me as fuzzy. Much in TCN did, I remem-
ber -- but I think aRb may clarify it, or confuse things
more grandiloquently, so my comments at this point may
seem superfluous. I felt, w/ TCN, that your anti-revision
stance (the work as probe-product, rather than as product)

41. Michael Lally, Oomaloom (Washington, DC: Dry Imager, 1975).

150  The Language Letters

wasnt needed: it could be a better work in every regard (I

think of LWitt’s [Ludwig Wittgenstein’s] constant revi-
sion: but now there are others w/ comments worth making to
you). But if you feel this process-art “a mystery story,
not polished statement” is what stands most firm, then you
put my comments in a different place. If we lived in [the]
same town, it maybe would be different.

But dont misunderstand me: I dont want to be cast as one

having a very clear view of what is your best work, as
though this means the appeal is somehow projective: I did
say Sunset Debris is a great work. It is. But, for the
record, I think Ketjak is a great work & even a master-
piece, or just as much a one. I also feel the same about
several of your shorter pieces after Mohawk, which is,
itself, “a great work.” TCN was very close to my “Ten-
dency” or worldview, whatever, & I found it intriguing, at
times ravishing, but, I think, too easy or surface-like
(that is to say, incomplete or flawed). “Too easy” not in
its manner, but perhaps in its being presented in a form I
found unreadied. But I certainly feel I know what’s going
on in the sequence of all these enuf to get beyond curious
taste-manship. (Though, dig, I know what you mean: it hap-
pens perhaps even more w/ me, since there’s even a smaller
& more unrepresentative portion that people have seen.)

Midnight now: my evening for you Ron. Thank you for a good
talk.

Love,

Bruce

Just read this & it seems so condensed & brief: what was,
for me, almost 2 hours of thinking & feeling to you. Odd
sense. Reread.

————
 The Language Letters 151

33. Steve McCaffery to Charles Bernstein (9/14/76)

dear charles:

treat to hear from you and thanks for the opportunity of

letting me see some of your work.

as regards the silliman piece i may be able to help you.

being contributing editor to OPEN LETTER i carry a bit of
weight on that mag and will push to have it published a
couple of issues from now. it’s a good mag ably edited by
toronto maestro frank davey. i have a regular section in
it along with bpNichol called TRG (cryptic semiosis for
TORONTO RESEARCH GROUP). if you know bruce andrews and or
ray dipalma or dick higgins (all nyc people) they have
copies. it pays a little too which is nice nessapa?

i’d like it to appear alongside my piece called: “The

Death of The Subject: Some Ontological Implications in
Recent American Writing” [SMcC annotates: if you’re
agreeable of course] -- a rather labored title for a rel-
atively in-depth descriptive piece on non-referential
formalism (or whatever you want to call it). it features
ron’s work, barb baracks, bruce andrews, et al. together
the two articles should be very fine. my approach is more
linguistic (looking at the texts as cipheralities, as an
emptying of signifiers of their signifieds & what onto-
logical implication this has on a) the ontology of the
text b) of the writer and c) of the reader. i was very
impressed by “Stray Straws”: an easy flow that carries
over very well a sensitivity to the work.

a few minor things you might want to consider however.

1) No. 11 which is “Another Example.” i think if you bring

this in then you should expand on it. the section seems
a little truncated & hence superficial. you might want
to go into the two major trends in sound poetry to date,
viz. the oral-primitivistic vector which in general is
152  The Language Letters

striving to extend voice into areas of pure energy through

the exploration of sub-phonemic units, cri-­
rhythmes
(gilles wolmann) megapneums (francois dufresne), and the
neo-­
dadaistic piece of ernst jandle, myself, bob cob-
bing (all or most of these guys are european). the other
strand being the mcluhanistic approach of the swedes,
henri chopin which sees in electronic techniques (voice
synthesizers, tape processing etc.) an actual extension
of the medium of voice. these latter people tending to
use “straight voice” as a unit degree zero from which to
depart from, whereas the oral people seem more inter-
ested in a reclaiming of language as physis, a return of
verbal-phonemic code back to its source in human energy.

there’s an interesting book you might like by jack burn-

ham. it’s called THE STRUCTURE OF ART & presents a struc-
turalist approach to aesthetics that you might like. He
takes levi-strauss’ distinction between nature and culture
and talks about “the culturalization of the natural and
the naturalization of the cultural.”

in levi-strauss’ use of the term, your argument wd take

on an interesting departure. silliman’s work for instance
wd appear to be “a naturalization of the cultural” under-
standing that the word as pure graphic event (or as close
to that as possible) the word as self-sustaining signifier
with no external reference is a self-demonstrating “natu-
ral” unit which is “culturized” by way of connotation and
reference. to take your argument and apply to the linguis-
tic plane wd show silliman to be one of the most “natchu-
ral” of writers around today.

“a syntactical exploration of consciousness” i’m not so

sure of. you seem to be committing the intentionalist fal-
lacy here. i mean on what criterion do you get into the
writer’s head? i’ve long felt it a potential danger to
have access to & to make subsequent use of commentary and
correspondence with an author concerned.
 The Language Letters 153

silliman’s work has always struck me by its ontological

self-sufficiency: a self-sufficiency inherent in the shap-
ing and duration of these pieces. the other thing that’s
important with this type of work is to try to think as
reader rather than writer. i think it easy as writer writ-
ing about writer to slip into a subconscious zone of sym-
pathetic attraction that has basically nothing to do with
that task at hand which is text. when it all boils down to
the nitty isnt author nothing more nor less than a semiotic
unit itself? simply a signature that signifies “responsi-
bility”?

“syntax” tends to be an umbrella term. stein somewhere

talks about the distinction between syntax and distribu-
tion: that there can be an act of scattering which is nec-
essarily retrieved by a reader as a sense of order simply
because of the enforced consecutiveness of any sequential
sign system like words.

“Signs of the Particularities” is a fine piece. you seem

to achieve and master a very fine balance between isolated
units and vertical continuities. i think the term i’m
looking for is “masterly transition” as that seems to be
what the piece is involved [with]. where connection isnt
asserted (grammar, perspective in painting) then you’re
into transition as the particular, local movement from one
thing to another. i also like the way you maintain traces
of references (in that the sentences read as that, units
of sense). it’s like reference is reorganized as an endo-
skeletal structure, the movement is centripetal into the
domain of the text. simply coz the sentences arent doing
anything other than be [in] themselves. again it’s ontol-
ogy as space time presence and i dig it.

do you know the work of jacques derrida? especially his

concept of linguistic deferral “defferance” and his notion
of the linguistic trace? you might pick up on him if you
havent done so already. he gives a very heavy philosophi-
cal defense of what you do aesthetically here.
154  The Language Letters

a new page with nothing much of consequence to say.

la condition humaine.

glad you liked toronto. i cant say whether i like nyc or

not as i’ve never been. i’m still a european struggling to
adjust to n. am. lifestyle. eight years out here.

i plan to come soon however as the number of people i know

through letters is increasing all the time.

in the meantime let’s keep the correspondence going. i’ll

tell you more about “Stray Straws” -- assuming that’s what
you’d like to do with it.

also wd like to see more of your work.

beau regards

Steve McCaffery

————

34. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews (11/6/76)

dear bruce,

been thinking to write you this note a few days now, so

thot today to get to it (& mebbe a few others) before
going over to rae’s for dinner w/ her & chuck & steve ben-
son & carla hayamann (sp) [Harryman] these last 2 past
editors of LA Review & part of the recent exodus from that
town, yng & w/ good heads but i dont know what their work
as such is like.

a few busy wks ahead: wednesday, i’m to partake in a sympo-

sium on poetry & politics (w/ tom mandel, who’s a neocritic
w/ frankfurt schule bias, & nina serrano, a local 3rd world
 The Language Letters 155

castroite)/ then a reading with bromige at the series wch

barry is putting on in the haight/ then in dec. a solo
reading w/ videotape piece at la mammelle gallery (gonna
read at least half The Chinese Notebook at that one, wch
will be in boundary 2 next time around, just corrected the
galleys this wk).

hmm. this looks like one of ray’s recitations of what

he’s doing this wk. anyhow, what i wanted to say (thot
i owed you a letter, but cant find one of yrs amid the
“unanswered” pile) was a comment on a comment of yrs in
a recent letter, re the “unfinished” or deliberately
rough quality of TCN. some of the things i’ve been work-
ing on lately, in aRb, have made it much easier for me to
articulate exactly why i chose (& will certainly choose
again) that surface quality, wch is as you rightly put it,
unworked out.

put simply it is: it is the one way in which to keep the

dialectical character of the process intact; it is in pre-
cisely those areas wch are redundant, poorly articulated,
contradictory or clearly in error wch point toward areas
where the work must go. to resolve the end product back
into the surface finish of, say, a well crafted essay
wld be to take a product and specifically identify it as
a commodity. wch is very specifically what i dont want.
because of the work i’ve been doing on aRb in the past few
days (literally have been writing 16 hours a day!) i think
i know much more clearly why i havent wanted that in the
past and wont in the future.

specifically, i think i’ve identified w/ reasonably accu-

racy the social origin of referentiality as we know it.
it came to me as the result of trying to incorporate sev-
eral different things into aRb’s widening process: the
class-specific nature of time (a thing wch i learned thru
my work at CPHJ); Sartre’s theories of groups & series;
and the commodity fetish. when it hit me i spent a day
or so going thru a lot of the work in the Rothenberg
156  The Language Letters

anthologies (to see if it checks out in contemporary

pre-capitalist societies) and in early English work: it
does or seems to.

as capitalist structures grew in society, a world of nat-

ural objects gave way to one in wch all objects had dual
characters -- as product and as commodity. the trauma of
this dualism was resolved by society by repressing one
dimension, thru serialization. in language this took place
also, since language interiorizes the social more than any
of the other senses (tho it has its parallels everywhere).
since it was the middle class wch was rising at the time,
the commodity nature of language -- WHICH IS ITS REFEREN-
TIALITY -- was retained while its product nature (which is
exactly what one finds in such works as Rothenberg prints
w/ all of its “nonsense” syllables, and also in the really
inexplicable plasticity of the closed forms of poetry wch
existed prior to capitalism in England and elsewhere) was
repressed. imagine, to make an analogy, what would happen
if the entire society were similarly to lose their ability
to see color: the change in language was literally that
drastic. one result was that this new serialized language
took on a new sense of descriptive power. one doesnt find
descriptions of the physical world to any great extent in
literature except until the last few centuries.

this has caused me to go back to my whole set of formulae

in aRb and to examine them in quite a new light. thus the
matrix (that sense every writer has of what his personal
tradition is, and whose blind spots -- wch Sartre wld see
as lacks -- identify the loci of the works he will write)
is no longer just to be identified as like a gas w/in a
vacuum. specifically, every pt on the matrix now must be
seen as a determinate coordinate of language and history.

there are a wide variety of consequences: one is the opti-

cal illusion that language can describe the world, ref-
erentiality, wch i think is an attitude abt language wch
is historically specific. the literary equivalent of the
 The Language Letters 157

commodity fetish is a referential fetish, wch has a sec-

ond and higher form in the narrative fetish. the rise of
the novel thus is the work of one area w/in the objec-
tive matrix (the sum of all poems), and wch is distinct
in my system now from personal matrices and from the
social matrix (lally’s anthology wld be an example of a
social matrix in wch you and i work, there is also an
“official” matrix, the works wch are adopted critically
in each generation for specific historical reasons), the
novel attempts to evolve independent of language (a con-
tradiction wch later leads it to leap out of the matrix
of poetry & to coopt a new media, film, a technological
advance, imposing itself on that art before its object
matrix has a chance to develop independently). the various
types of modernism in this light can be seen as deformed
attempts to rejoin the product and commodity natures of
language: surrealism, working w/in the narrative fetish,
creates a theory of distorted narrative; joyce attempts
to do it via a return to linguistics, but a linguistics
wch is itself determined by this phenomena of capital-
ism, this mass aphasia, in wch linguistics is seen as word
roots, etc., a diachronic linguistics (much as narrative
itself is a diachronic projection); Hemingway attempts to
develop an art of the sentence [RS annotates: In Jameson’s
words Hem does this by “forgetting the words”!!]; Olson,
using a very typical individualist deformation, makes the
page a signature for the body image of the writer, etc.
IN THIS VIEW, TWO TYPES OF WRITING russian futurism and
language-centered writing of the present REPRESENT THE
LEAST DEFORMED ATTEMPTS.

the art of commodity language is that sense, in its high-

est form in the novel, when the reader has a sensation of
staring at a blank page thru wch a story is “seen” working
itself out. Bellow is a good example.

two other points: one can now see also the rise of liter-
ary criticism, as being that self-consciousness wch for-
merly had been part of the poem itself, now separated from
158  The Language Letters

the poem, much the way the novel separated from it. since,
in this view, self-consciousness is perceived as trau-
matic, litcrit can never be as popular as other types and
is brought into the university system in a way no other
language form is, and is literally interned there: if the
universities did not exist at this pt in history, litcrit
wld disappear. in addition, it takes on the active role
of attempting to detraumatize newer forms of poetry, wch
continually attempt to reestablish that lost sense of lan-
guage: as commodity and product.

the other pt: orthodox marxist criticism is itself caught

w/in the fetish of narration. it returns to the epic (in
Plekhanov and Lukacs) and sees it as narration, wch is an
error. the great precapitalist literature shld be seen as
ARTICULATIONS as such.

i think that what i’ve been identifying as i in my for-

mula is nothing less than dialectical conscious-
ness, and that the perception of such consciousness is
the energy, vision, power one senses in any major work
of whatever type. thus the four subgroups of i: ubeity,
motive, existence and actualization can be seen as the
social (the matrix, thesis), individual (motive, antithe-
sis) and the new stage (wch has 2 sides to it, existence,
a manifestation of commodity nature, and actualization,
a manifestation of product nature). thus even the most
deformed and reactionary work has a profoundly revolution-
ary base, wch in our society is one reason art aint all
that popular, it’s just one more trauma and a dangerous
one if seen clearly.

hence, the well-formed essay, the optical illusion of

clarity is a historically specific deformation, and one
to avoid, if one wants one’s own work to be contributions
toward an evolving revolutionary consciousness. thus the
unfinished character of TCN (and aRb).

all this is still very partially worked out, and i’m

 The Language Letters 159

working carefully now toward answering lots of other ques-

tions wch it raises (e.g., what is it about the new stage
of global class structure w/ the corresponding blurring
of classes at the center of the empire wch gives rise to
language-centered writing?). one key danger: that of decid-
ing that the pre-serialized language, w/ both product and
commodity natures intact, was somehow whole, a past utopi-
anism. it wasnt. in fact, the invention of referentiality
was a means of resolving a contradiction w/in the language
wch corresponded to a perception of contradiction w/in the
society. whatever whole language is, it is something wch
either existed so long ago (in pre-capital groups) that we
can not find our way back (after all who needs a return to
feudalism?) or else it is to be found in the future, per-
haps w/ the replacement of commodity culture w/ product
culture even at the level of consciousness.

i see i’m not going to have the time to write any other
letters. but i wanted to get back to you on this pt. the
idea is causing me to recalculate every concept i’ve got.
let me know what you think.

love,

Ron

————

delayed a day to xerox

35. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman (11/10/76)

Dear Ron,

your letter arrived today & it only seemed that you owed me
a letter -- in fact I’ve not written back after your last
notebook-masterpiece. Things have been eating me alive here
& I’ve (curious here about the epistemological signifi-
cance of my use of “and” in sentences, a fusing of elements
160  The Language Letters

rather mechanically: ________________ & ________________:

rather than setting up paths of subordination) let slip my
responsibilities to most everything. I’m quietly undergo-
ing a crisis of self-definition, so things will be bubbling
round for some time. As you might have gathered, this cen-
ters on questions of time & how I’m to distribute it, as
well as what this might mean for who I want to be. Wrench-
ing feelings of being bogged down. Very little getting
done; much planned. “Maintenance” activities.

But I didnt, & dont, want you to misunderstand what will

possibly be an erratic correspondence from me: I feel that
my life will need to be, or to feel, better connected
before I can get back to a place where I’m really partici-
pating in the joint probings involved in what our writing
brings about. This fills me with tremendous regret -- and
hurt [BA annotates: the rest of the letter suggests that
this is unnecessary self-flagellation]; but it’s not some-
thing I can just hone in on in the midst of all the rest.
It will have to flow naturally from a more centered stance
(from the body outward, w/ fewer distractions, & w/out the
energies of the world tugging at such cross-­
purposes) as
it did in the past. It scares me some that I’ve allowed
myself to fall away from this, or to be confused, incre-
mentally, but possibly largely because things had in the
past always seemed so under control (perhaps because I
never acknowledged the kind of commitment involved in
activities, like a bill that falls due after a gigantic
meal). Trade-offs.

That, a preface. Most present here is your letter, which

not only convinced me about your argument concerning the
deliberately rough character of TCN (though I think the
reading of the piece will continue to depend on some
implicit understanding of just such an argument & this is
not likely to be forthcoming; in that sense, it may have
the same effect as did the “cryptic” impact of my “Surface
Explanation” piece [BA inserts: on many people (though,
natch, not on you, Steve, Charles)], or our poetry in
 The Language Letters 161

general: my reaction to TCN originally is therefore simply

the typical response of someone unable to acknowledge the
“point” of the form at first glance.) Beyond, your let-
ter is about the most interesting & provocative 2 pages
I’ve read about language & social structure ever -- & is a
veritable GEM [BA annotates: I could go on at length with
such sentiments. Tour-de-force, etc.] I felt like sending
off a telegram: THAT’S IT!! Fandango. The social origin
of referentiality to be found in the organization of pro-
duction in the visibly capitalist form, with its emphasis
on measurement, quantifiability, ownership as an individ-
ualist (and individualizing) proposition, the division
between creation and commodity, and the fetishizing of
the latter. The commodity nature of language as its ref-
erentiality, with the product character of it repressed.
The descriptive power of referentiality. The second-order
quality of narrative (as temporally organized descrip-
tion -- or the form of description most appropriate to the
gradual triumph of the structure of technical rationality
& the subordination of more & more areas of human life to
that structure). Referentiality as fetish. Specific things
you say about pre-capitalist poetry, about the appropria-
tion of newer media by the narrative thrust -- e.g. film,
before its object matrix had explored the possibilities,
the recasting of modernism as failed attempts at conjunc-
tion -- similar to Antin’s reading of, say, Pound, as
someone unable to acknowledge the contradiction between
image and music, of Hemingway, Olson, Joyce, mass apha-
sia, the “disappearance of the reader” in the novel --
or, really, the idea of an automatic progress going on in
front of the staring reader; the spilt between self-con-
sciousness & material actuality embodied in the litcrit/
writing distinction, etc.: these are all incredibly bril-
liant insights of the highest order.

Gee, & I had thought poets were supposed to be dumb beat-

nicks (niks) -- which would be noted as an example of the
expectation that the self-consciousness was separated out
from the production & encased in a social role (critic,
162  The Language Letters

interpreter), whose presence was made possible on a grand

scale in the 19th century by the growing presence of
“unproductive labor” in the class structure, etc.

Some stray thoughts:

Description is, or takes the form of, possessive individ-

ualism. [BA annotates: the social nature of “I,” or
of consciousness, is repressed, as is the social or
collective nature of society.] Referentiality becomes
an ideology of possessiveness, and the narrative adds
a time dimension appropriate to the transformation of
the natural world (a world which takes on a largely
instrumental role in relationship to technical prog-
ress). Still individualist in its appropriation.

The clarity of description & reference parallels, as a

concern, the clarity of measurement required by new
social forms. Here the crucial moment may be that of
analogy, and comparison, hence the emphasis placed
on homogeneity, duplication, intersubjective commu-
nication (as in the methodologies of natural science
developing at the same time). [BA annotates: Or on
metaphor? Or metonymy? The socially semantic aspects
are drained to make way for a hypnotizing IMPOSED
relationship between reader & text.]

Reference then atomizes the public (as would any strong

stress on the visual qualities -- McLuhan, the hyp-
notizing of hypostatizing; the “cyclops eye” of sci-
ence & Newton’s Mill.) (Anti-positivist ideologies
tending, implacably, toward a reincarnation of pre-
capitalist utopias here).

The distinction might better be drawn between commodity

and process (which is included in the idea of prod-
uct, but the “product” notion might itself be con-
taminated by commodity fetishism). What is repressed
is its history, or the creation (in the case of
 The Language Letters 163

language, the socio-cultural matrix, as well, per-

haps, as Chomskyan notions of encoding, etc.)

Referentiality as Commodity as Fetish:

as in Barthes’ Mythologies, Shapiro’s essay in

Paul Breines, ed. Critical Interruptions: “One-­
Dimensionality: The Universal Semiotic of Techno-
logical Experience,” & all of Habermas (where what
is brought out is the separation of the political
& the economic, as independent spheres, in liberal
capitalism -- so that this is the real parallel
you’re getting at in the distinction between com-
modity & process/product: it’s very close to that
between economic & political activity, where the
latter is repressed in the liberal capitalist order
(& the shift in language forms may either fol-
low or precede it). [BA annotates: And the polit-
ical aspect becomes reified or “visual”-ized. Leni
Riefenstahl.] The argument currently (one I make
in a piece on delegitimation & Habermas makes in
Legitimation Crisis) is that this separation is
breaking down as the state intervenes to bol-
ster the accumulation process -- reminiscent of
pre-­
capitalist forms & leading to a “re-feudal-
ization” of productive practices. [BA annotates:
This is “late capitalism.”] This re-feudalizaiton
implies that the validity claims of politics (its
ability to be discursively redeemed, that is, its
truth claims: which are similar to those which are
always involved in any EXCHANGE of speech acts)
are entering into the determination & constitu-
tion of economic life. That the commodity fetish-
ism (close to, or indeed identical with, Barthes’
idea of myth) is being dispelled by the interven-
tion or process/product emphases (or, political
will formation, which it had previously been able
to repress -- via the structural depoliticization
of social life involved in liberal capitalism). In
164  The Language Letters

Barthes’ terms, the surface-like qualities of myth

(or of commodities), their defiantly natural, non-­
historical, depoliticized (he says “myth is depo-
liticized speech”, p. 143) nature -- like Derrida’s
“surplus of signifier” -- is being dissipated. One
can go beneath their impression of a world without
depth, of a world whose “clarity is euphoric” (the
world where, as in the novel “the reader has a sen-
sation of staring at a blank page thru wch a story
is ‘seen’ working itself out”) & see those appar-
ent signs as mere signifiers. [BA annotates: Or,
actually, the sign-signified relation isnt as exact
a term as something like act/context, or “embed-
dedness.”] This allows them to be discursively
redeemed, etc. In that way, the repoliticization,
or re-feudalization beginning to be apparent in
the social world might be the underlying fabric for
the joining of what you call product & commodity
in language-centered writing. [BA annotates: This
would be a way of seeing its historical appropri-
ateness, w/out getting into global structure. Class
structure itself becomes a political term.]

Commodity is myth is ideology & is a certain kind of

curious referentiality.

Also here are Habermas’ distinctions between work &

interaction, in Theory & Practice. [BA annotates:
From the Jena of Hegel.] Habermas’ notions of a
pure communicative action appearing closer to the
sorts of de-contextualization [BA annotates: What I
implied in “Surface Explanation”: language-­centered
writing is a counter-explanation.] involved in
­language-centered, YES, writing than they do to the
repressive, or terroristic contextualizations (the
sham of referentiality [BA annotates: the imposed
explanation inherent in referentiality]) con-
tained in referential writing. We can relate this,
socially, to a much larger notion of emancipation.
 The Language Letters 165

“Political content becomes invisible in fetishism.”

“Through the absorption of use value into exchange

value, uses become only meanings.” (Hence the need
for their control through a larger project of ref-
erentiality -- otherwise they might return, (the
return of the repressed)! -- in the form of valid-
ity claims and a demand for discursive redemption
in speech exchanges, w/out being satisfied by the
consumerist fulfillment of guided semantisation [BA
annotates: the project of narrative, or of “account-
ing”] that would cover up the collapse of real
embodied referents. Individual words are the ghosts
of regret. [BA annotates: similar to McCaffery’s
idea of alternity (sic) or reference as absence. Or
Derrida on “defferance.” Or Steiner in After Babel.]

Shapiro relates this also to taboos & incest, at which

point the whole argument threatens to fade into
Bataille, Levi-Strauss, Lacan. Repressive desub-
limation at work in the language sphere -- with
“product” or “process” being the semantic aspect
formerly sublimated? Sublimated because it is
impossible to individualize? If it re-emerges, it
re-emerges in the threatening idea of the world as
social and as love’s body. (materium)

The transformation of real objects into signs is fol-

lowed by social amnesia, as well as by the transfor-
mation of signs into bogus objects or commodities.
Into “cardboard” -- TV images.

Referentiality thus becomes like the tyranny of the

technical object (& the gradual drying up of interac-
tive norms) [BA annotates: and this again relates to
the manipulability of the technical object & techni-
cal rules, as distinct from the interactive norms of
the shared life-world.] -- & is related to the pas-
sive gaze-like nature of sexual relations as well.
Here see Shapiro: “The elevation of the technical
166  The Language Letters

object [as commodity form] to the model sexual object

propagates a universal form of sexual fantasy [par-
alleled by the kinds of linguistic hypnotism spread
by referentiality] that is frustrating and self-per-
petuating because it is unrealizable, namely, (& note
how close this is to the distinctions you are mak-
ing on modes of readership -- & also to Lacan, say)
the desire to have a sexual experience in which one
is not there as a subject, that is, w/ structures of
intersubjectivity, responsibility, and temporality,
but only as an object, in a moment of transparency in
which two objects collide.” (!!!) Agog at the connec-
tions & this but scratch de surfaz.

Well, each of these strands led me in about a dozen

directions, but this may give you some sense of the
firecracker-­
like connections getting set off, & the tex-
ture thereof, by your letter. The key to its generative
power for me lay in the link between commodity fetishism
& referentiality & the ideas about their social origins.
This is the missing link (altho I’m hesitant about whether
“product” is sufficiently contrasting). (“Production”
might be, but “product” has a different aura.)

Another piece worth looking at here is Lichtman’s bril-

liant discussion of ideology as commodity fetish (& the
idea of transparency again) in his piece on “Marx’s Theory
of Ideology” in Socialist Revolution 23. I meant it [BA
draws arrow to the underlined sentence “This is the miss-
ing link”] was the missing link to me because it showed
how language might be brought in line with a larger arc of
thought that’s been hovering over me for several years --
it’ll take a long while to get further into it. But, after
taking an hour or so here to just let my associations fly,
I feel quite unlike the anxious distracted guy who began
this. You’ve genuinely excited the shit out of me, Ron. I
still want to get out & reread your long notebook “Printed
Matter” letter to me & respond in depth, but wanted even
more to get this to you immediately. [BA annotates:
 The Language Letters 167

Postscription: can you, at some point if not right away,

make me a xerox of this & send the xerox to me? I’d like to
keep a copy, but dont want to delay sending it a few days.]

Much love,

Bruce

————

36. Charles Bernstein to Bruce Andrews (11/15/76)

bruce,

i think i got it better now.

“perspicuity his middle name.”

in reducing poetry (wrtng) to its barest elements --

revealing a surfaceness that seems to be involved primarily
with the distribution & placement of phonemes & morphemes,
what needs to be avoided is the kind of reductivism char-
acteristic of analytic philosophy (the mathematical model)
where the reduced elements function not as a crystal-
lized surface presence but rather generalized symbols
whose meaning lies primarily in their assigned referents.
the programme of analytic philosophy was also to reduce
to essentials, but for them this meant the elimination
of accidental -- particular -- qualities in the search
for the universal forms of meaning, till finally their
reduced play of p’s and q’s became like nothing in the
world, being totally referential without any substance,
analytically true schemas (to wch cp. kostelanetz’s
mathematical “poems” wch follow this same course, for
the poems all revolve around some mathematical/logical
sequence or ordering pattern, are instances of these
generalized rules) whereas it seems to me you’ve turned
the reductivism of analytic philosophy on its head (wch
makes yr work exactly the opposite say of the kostelanetz
168  The Language Letters

stuff i’m talking abt -- just as you say: he is obsessed

with reference, narration) by going to the most minimal
elements without any reductivism at all -- a pure sur-
face that does not lack substance but essentializes sub-
stance -- wch is composed of particulars not abstracts
(not pointers like #s and p’s and q’s, tho note both of
these are used in surface constructions, but ones without
substance). i want to say something like analytic phil
has developed surface contructions [constructions] that
essentialize reference & that in turning this on its head
by sticking to accidentals -- particles -- you’ve essen-
tialized the hum (cf. “Palukaville”) -- & it’s somewhere
in this swirl of discussion that my remark abt the risk
in wrtng that kind of poem is using referential units at
all & why it was appropriate & interesting that in many
of them you’d avoided such units & the “risk” as you sd
you felt when including them. this incidentally is an
example of a typically muddy, unperspicuous, presentation
. . . but then i like muddiness. & speaking of unperspi-
cuity, try on this angle of view: while melnick’s pcoems
emphasize density & opacity (in their use of nonrefer-
ential units, if you’ll forgive the sloppiness of that
phrase, but on the other hand what’s wrong with sloppy
phrases, well it’s obvious what’s wrong, incidentally
since you havent seen too much of my typing composition
you’ll notice my typewriter -- wch has the same type-
face as ray’s -- sometimes overtypes one letter on the
next & a brain dysfunction of mine causes me to reverse
letters & drop letters, all of wch bothers me & i dont
know what to do abt it) these highly arrayed/arranged
wrks of yrs i’m referring to (i never use that word with-
out some trembling) seem to emphasize (once again obvi-
ously the wrong word) crystallinity & distillation -- but
(& here’s the amazing) a distillation without (can you
guess? that’s right:) reductivism. a contrast to a form
of perspicuous representation wld be the searching, prob-
ing, detective story model (e.g. the Phil Invs, the Chi-
nese Ntbk, &&) & esp. the Continential Op by d hammett,
 The Language Letters 169

who seeks to impose order on the world & does impose a

possible order, the solution of the crime. this is made
esp. interesting by the non-personality of the Op, i.e.,
he is pure operator (& thus in lnge-centered poetry we
see the collapse of the Op, the operator, onto the lan-
guage itself by the use of programmes &c. in generat-
ing the work). evasive & obscure refernce [reference]
fits in here: the search for numena [noumena], substnace
[substance], actuality rather than the presentation/
actualization/crystallization of it (wch i think is the
sense of Sunset Debris. in my own wrk, esp. “Lo Disfruto”
& “The Taste Is What Counts” i’ve been interested in the
hover of consciousness, the obliqueness & insubstanti-
ality & evasiveness of reference & the haecity [haec-
ceity] ((thatness)) of this hover.) so the perspicuous
representation & the investigatigative [investigative]
hover are two inclinations & prhps the contrast betw very
reduced poetry & using textured, at times programmatic,
prose that i was alluding (it beats referring) to over my
chocolate malted & yr stale choc cake is rooted in this
distinction. there are of course other inclinations than
these two, i think the prophetic/blakean is the one & the
flow of the personal life (o’hara, lally, greenwald &
mayer’s Memory) is poss another. (an argument agst much
of conceptual art is that rather than investigating or
actualizing, it simply theatricalizes the commodity/prod-
uct split -- also known as the split betw the public and
the private & under other aliases over the yrs.)

the next day (friday), i also got a letter from ron, abt
the commodity/product thing & also the five-way collabo-
ration.42 since “Palukaville” seems to me related to ron’s
first monad & certainly to mine (wch i’ve just begun

42. An early reference to the five-way collaboration between Bruce Andrews, Charles
Bernstein, Ray DiPalma, Steve McCaffery, and Ron Silliman that would eventually be pub-
lished as LEGEND (New York: L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E/Segue, 1980) and is being reprinted
in an expanded facsimile edition, edited by Matthew Hofer and Michael Golston, by the
University of New Mexico Press (2020).
170  The Language Letters

wrking on) & had its genesis, in part, as an answer to

Sunset Debris, i thought you might enjoy seeing it.

will be in touch soon (or call me).

best,

Charles

————

37. Steve McCaffery to Bruce Andrews (11/23/76)

dear bruce:

a delight & a pleasure to hear from you enfin. i was

relieved to know that it was eros rather than thanatos
that was modifying your life . . . had this image of you
stretched out like chatterton in the thralls of ennui and
weltschmertz or hanging out the flavours down at baskin &
robbins seeking the north american answer to pain.

so alger hiss et al. dont sound too bad eets zee energy
vectors that count all the way.

truly great letter from you also that helped maintain the
intellectual high i got at the symposium on postmodern
performance. was out about 30 minutes ago and picked up
ala sir geste chon habermas, goffman, critical interrup-
tions & chomsky.

thinking too about a phrase from foucault “the fellowship

of discourse” which put me in mind of all of us . . . that
really this is what i would like to see develop further . . .
open letters . . . small, spontaneous duplications of what-
ever things are currently exciting, info channels, intellec-
tual ignitions and let this grow as it needs to grow.

ron’s notion of commodity-narrative fetishism and yr

 The Language Letters 171

reply together were gems . . . proud to be reading them.

i agreed with you on the possible ambiguity of product,
that the term itself carries shades of commodity. he sent
a piece for OL and i’ve suggested that he either changes,
justifies or elaborates upon his use. that being the only
weakness in the piece.

a strong feeling too that you’re both covering areas that

i would have to have gone into, that it’s a nice freeing
up of energies for other areas. derrida . . . wow . . . i
think in the whole notion of alternity and the necessary
semiotic absence of the sign . . . that here lies the fun-
damental contradiction of western language. we’re discov-
ering it and we’re the first to try to live and write in
the knowledge of it.

like, how do we use language once we know its fundamental

self-contradictions. we’re on the verge of something big,
i feel that very deeply. we’re the first to get out of the
midden (getting out of rather) of the midden of xthousands
of yrs. of schitzophrenia.

and you know it’s what beckett knows intuitively . . . like

beckett dramatizes and humanizes in obsolete structures
what is just now getting tackled, discovered & investigated
on the mirror plane of language.

i’m hoping a lot of this exciting too & a personal fore-

boding of something big might get carried over into the OL
pieces.

enclosed you’ll find a rough draft of my piece for OL. i’m

tonally unhappy with it . . . like i’m stretching myself
into unnatural style . . . i may have to settle for it in
a form similar to what is there. the fragment-notes i’m
going to work in too.

the symposium on postmodern performance was a gas. heavy

semiotic stress tho unfortunately umberto eco was ill &
172  The Language Letters

couldnt make it. more important than the conferences was

actually meeting a lot of beautiful people. many were
renewed friendships: jackson mac low, jerry rothenberg,
and many new: michel benamou, leon katz (a beautiful man),
carolee schneemann (likewise), and cage. cage read his
mesostics from Finnegans Wake, but prior to that read the
first page of joyce: there was something ineffably moving
about that interface, that coming together.

dick higgins too (terrific man).

the horsemen -- well we were completely floored by the

response. a standing ovation for five minutes & a “demand”
performance again on the saturday to another standing ova-
tion. ionesco likened us to what he does in the last scene
of The Bald Soprano & clued in immediately into our roots
in dada -- which was beautiful.

a few of the consequences of the reading: requests to read in

san diego, iowa city, detroit, chicago, pittsburgh, milwau-
kee (again), buffalo and new york. i was offered a short-term
writer in residence position at the u. of wisconsin (theatre
dept.) which i’ll probably take if the terms are okay.

no exaggeration if i say this trip culminated a good seven

years of my work. i hope someday bruce you actually see
us. it’s hard to verbalize what happens, precisely because
it’s a journey out of signs into energy processes. i’d
love ron to see it too (although he’ll probably see me in
s.f. when i do my solo there) but i think that it’s in
performance like ours . . . which i’m convinced bypasses
the cortex, aiming energy at the cns that sets up a dia-
logic structure with an audience. audience & performers
literally become one energy circuit, i.e., de-commoditized
(as performer and audience as functional roles are like
commodities) & get into a) a self-questioning of role and
b) a mutually generated energy circuit.

right now, & in

 The Language Letters 173

the light of what i actually experienced interpersonally

in milwaukee i’m sure that this is an important area for
the explosion of the fetish.

like performer and audience fuse in a “human signifier”

that states simply its own entity and eventuality.

god this waxing is probably making you puke but i’d like
to give you some idea of how moving this experience was
for me and how it convinced me that The Horsemen have
something unique.

i’m writing to robert enright at CVII to tell you’re will-

ing to review: he’ll send you a copy of Dr. Sadhu which
you can pass on to ray or charles if either dont have a
copy [SMcC annotates: that or else I’ll get him to send
’Ow’s “waif” to you and Dr. Sadhu to Ron]. i’ll also send
a copy of the letter. i’ll write too to ron.

incidentally, tho things arent certain yet i think i’m

going to be getting involved with a printing press -- not
my own, but therafield’s. wch shd give me the scope for
a little midnight work. perhaps we can shoot down (heavy
implication what i mean is reduce) transbluecency so that
we get compact and very attractive. i’ll see. the money is
not really the problem as i realized recently that is never
the issue if you think a work is worth doing as i do this.

writing furiously right now to many people so letters

doubtless will cross. so i’m abandoning sequence. hope the
draft is useful to you and wait with baited tongue, neck
and cortex yr piece. best of luck with your own symposia
too. love to both you and ellen,

Steve

————
174  The Language Letters

38. Lyn Hejinian to Charles Bernstein (12/16/76)

Dear Charles,

I ground to a dead halt yesterday afternoon, after many

good days of work, so am taking a holiday, to answer your
letter, bake cookies with the children, find a tree out-
doors from which the birds, raccoons, skunks, and squirrels
might like to pluck popcorn and cranberries. Christmas on
the farm. My daughter wants to concoct a cakelike mess for
the horses -- molasses, carrots, and oats -- as a treat.

I’ve read your letter over several times, and thought much
about the questions you raise -- all that business of
ideas and their subsequent realities and whose they are.
The “whose they are” interests me -- I’d never thought
of it in just that way. I supposed the thought and the
thinker mutually create each other; the real fabricated by
the realizer.

As an aside, it makes me think of that great Idealist,

Buckminster Fuller -- at some point during one of this
Thinking-out-louds which are his Lectures, he posited the
thought that culture is an idea pool, and anyone with any
ideas should contribute them to the idea pool, and anyone
in need of ideas should be able to pull out a pailful. Part
of what he meant, of course, was to get away from copy-
rights and the possessive anxiety that artists and thinkers
are crippled by. That was during the Sixties, when we all
had more faith than now. Of course, he was right.

I guess I have lost some of that faith myself, however.

You speak some of “us” and “people” and I find that I
avoid dealing with the issue of the collective persona,
mostly because I do truly dislike “people”; I mean the
concept of such, or man as a species. We’ve been a disas-
ter on the planet. The pious cruelties that man justifies
into daily rituals make me despair for us all. I notice,
though, that I dearly love my friends and family -- indi-
viduals; that may be why I prefer to think in those terms.
Maybe one can only speak accurately in terms of specifics.
 The Language Letters 175

Many people have suggested I read Laura Riding’s work;

I’ve yet to find a single one of her books, but I’ll most
certainly buy one when I do.

Wish I could see EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH.

Willits has no cultural events. Well -- singing coyotes.

Best,

Lyn

————

39. Charles Bernstein to Ron Silliman (2/14/77)

ron,

this is that promised letter abt our proposed magazine, a

copy of wch i’ll also send to bruce.43 in addition to var-
ious excursuses by me, this letter incorporates, as best
i cld, a letter bruce sent to me summarizing two lengthy
discussions we had in december in wch we formulated the
idea of the three of us coediting a magazine. (all quoted
material is verbatim from bruce’s letter.44) all this,
however, is still just suggestions, so you shldnt feel
we’re coming to you with a pre-fixed structure. this pro-
posal is a collaboration, three way, & your transformation
of the text is still to come.

i wld be managing editor (i.e., resp for mail, printing,

letters, distribution) for the present since i have more

43. In a letter to Silliman dated December 28, 1976, Bernstein mentions that he is “getting
ready a letter to you abt starting up a magazine” and asks, “Is group editing a good idea?”
This letter, not included here, is excerpted in an appendix to the expanded reprint of LEG-
END (see note 42).
44. Bernstein quotes so thoroughly from Andrews’s lengthy letter that we decided to
exclude it to avoid redundancy and conserve space for other correspondence.
176  The Language Letters

time free than bruce & presumably you’re still tired from
Tottel’s -- but this position might & prob shld rotate,
as possible. susan wld be art editor, resp for layout as
well as visual art (tho obviously we’d all participate in
this). details of a final decision making process still
open, tho i think we shld try for unanimity on all selec-
tions published.

mag wld appear three times per year. i wld like to see us
come up with proposed table of contents for the first three
issues as a first step. once that’s agreed upon, we can
begin to solicit for all three issues at the same time (try-
ing even to get them as set as possible over the summer).

$ is the obvious constraint on format. i see the first

issue sort of on the order of Tottel’s 16, Big Deal #2 or
Oculist Witnesses -- i.e., offset, IBM executive type,
side stapled. 8½x11 is the obvious, but legal size (8½x14)
folded in half -- sort of square -- with stitch stapling
might be even better. initially 40 sides. 100 copies mini-
mum. “Goals: more pages, sturdier cover, nicer paper, more
copies. Not a goal: more than three times a year (i think
that’s all that’s sustainable).” costs wld be split three
ways, tho i want to raise money thru patrons, benefit
events, grants, &c. for # 1, tho, i think we’ll be on our
own. typing to be divided betw bruce & i (& you if possi-
ble). distribution poss thru the ny state distribution svc
($25 fee) poss under the umbrella of asylum’s press so i
can distribute bks too -- i.e., ray’s Marquee wch i’m put-
ting out soon. bks under the name of the mag “press” are
also something to be considered. in any case, we need an
umbrella name to increase poss of things we publish.

no names have really satisfied me, tho bruce’s suggestion

of “Letters” comes close. (i also sort of like Lack’s
Gap, but. . . .) the concept, as i see it, is a magazine
committed to publishing the kind of work publ in Tottel’s
& bruce’s Toothpick issue -- but to go beyond just print-
ing the best poetry of this type in order to include (a)
 The Language Letters 177

work that wld not ordinarily appear in a “poetry” con-

text, i.e., visual work, photograms, related “texts” from
musicians, painters, performance artists, philosophy or
sociology, letters, journal entries, &c. (esp. from peo-
ple whose letters, journals, &c. are not often seen),
found texts & visuals, significant out-of-print poetry &
poetics & other kinds of texts from recent & far past;
(b) critical thought/writing, esp. in non-expository
forms, but also, in general, to increase the scope of
what normally gets put in a poetry magazine to something
more on the level of the old sense of “letters” (e.g. men
& women of letters) so that political & social & ethical
views by various people wld be solicited & printed (so
that, i.e., something along the lines of bruce’s article
on the state wld seem appropriate, or eigner on bussing
in boston, or oppen on communist organizing, or mccaffery
on canada or dipalma on clint eastwood or ed friedman on
phil glass or . . . or. . . . the idea, here, is that
we can provide an aesthetic/political context that can
coherently encompass a large variety of modes of writing
& kinds of concerns. my criteria for what we shld print
is that we stand fully behind the quality of the actual
writing in every single piece we publish. specifically, i
am concerned that the quality of some performance texts
and conceptual documents often is not in the wrtng itself
but in the “idea” to be “done” somewhere outside the
page. & although the author may be a terrific artist, &
the piece in its original place also gd, in our magazine
it appears more as a document of something else than a
fully realized thing, in itself, as writing, there, in
the magazine. in such cases, i wldnt want to print it.
likewise with “critical” thought that has gd content but
doesnt work as a text (i.e., is simply a piece of theo-
retical, expository, jargon filled, wrtng, right on as it
may be.) Ear-NY is the most flagrant example of this, but
much in the last two Big Deals is relevant, as well as
The Fox & most of the other art scene mags.

each issue (except the first) wld have a special focus that
178  The Language Letters

wld take no more than ½ of the pages (e.g., visual ori-

ented wrtng, politics). poss, later on, there cld be spe-
cial editors for these sections. “the first issue would be
importantly aimed at establishing some roots, some sources
(a task we wld continue a la rothenberg).” “for the first
issues no unsolicited work advised.” in general, we wld try
to keep printing wrk of relevant “younger” writers in all
the issues (except, by and large, in the first). i was ini-
tially hesitant to draw extensively from our own wrks, but
dick higgins (one of the only people i’ve talked to abt the
project & with him only peripherally, since it seemed bet-
ter not to let the word out yet) argued strongly that we
shld not be reticent to print our own wrk since a mag by us
wld be putting fwrd an aesthetic that our own wrk best rep-
resents. (i’m convinced.) also, some notice in each issue
of important new bks (i.e., short reviews or brief quotes).

poss “special focuses”

1. visual oriented wrtng

2. sexuality

3. politics (or “Radicalism, Language & Art”)

4. 5-way collab (wch wld prob take the whole issue)

5. abstraction (or lnge centerd wrtng) & women (ed. by a

woman, of course)

possibilities for first issue (& others)

eigner -- short prose wrk, essay. answer to our inter-

view questions -- plus one or two poems.

carl andre -- a few of the best pieces from the ’60’s

(i.e., the endicott stuff).

coolidge -- they are obvious & yet so everpresent in

& mayer
 The Language Letters 179

this sort of thing that i think we risk being very

unadventurious [unadventurous]. i’d like to print
more of coolidge’s prose stuff (or his last piece
in this) & dont want to print bernadette’s new ny
school-y poems (tho i do like them). anyway, we shld
think abt it, esp. if we’re going to put them both
in issue # 1.

mac low

grenier

mccaffery -- some poems

antin -- maybe he cld answer some of our charges, eh?

(“answers to questions from us drafted by ron”)45

some texts on stein -- but by oppen or blaser or cree-

ley (i.e., “someone different in other words”)

beckett -- “shld seriously consider reproducing that

‘lessness’ piece (dating it & bootlegging it).” bruce
is here referring to a piece i have a copy of wch
hasnt been printed in the usa -- a very beautiful,
less referential than usual, piece. it’s abt 10 pp.
i’m not sure it’s appropriate for first issue tho it
is an important root text -- but so long.

ed friedman on rbt wilson or glass. or on decorative

wrtng. (he’s got some interesting ideas on this.)
short.

“a brief review of zukofsky’s A 22-33 or The Rev of the

Word, etc.”

“some short pieces by one of the people doing intermedia

45. See, for example, Bernstein’s letter to Jackson Mac Low of November 13, 1977.
180  The Language Letters

wrk here in ny -- laurie anderson, say, or joan la bar-

bara, simone forti, anna lockwood, beth anderson, yvonne
rainier -- but someone well known. rbt morris, even.”
(it’s here that my concern with wrtng quality comes in --
but if we have enuf to choose from, or are specific enuf,
we can prob get gd stuff.)

john ensslin on schizophrenic language -- this is a

piece by a friend of mine on schizophrenic speech
& wrtng, as diagnosed by shrinks (“derailment,”
“aphasia”), & its rel to poetry -- part interesting
is some of the wrtng itself (one absolutely superb
piece i already have seen) & the technical terminol-
ogy.

café ali rosa names -- this is a found piece, in

effect, of strange names that people really have --
some really great ones like -- Lew T. Jew & Wakeman
Smoot.46

“‘index’ 2 -- an extension, by andrews (i.e., me).”

mccaffery on mac low

something by ray

found texts

“Reprint of a paragraph of Lens by Frank Kuenstler -- or,

simply, as a regular feature allowing us to highlight new
books or magazines, to show certain allegiances & to fill
the issues with fascinating little tidbits hither & yon.
of relatively new books by Antin, Bernstein, Creeley,
Cage, Dreyer, Eigner, Greenwald, Knowles, Mayer, Coolidge,
Mac Low, Melnick, Acker, McCaffery, Perlman, Watten,
Weiner, Waldrop, Barthes, The Fox, October, De Jong. Maybe

46. Bernstein explains that his brother, Edward Amber, used these names for “his very
off-the-rails pieces, which he did primarily for his own and friends’ entertainment.”
 The Language Letters 181

have 3-6 such paragraphs in each issue. As a notice of our

approval & interest & support.”

Visual Oriented Writing:

tobie lurie

“Tom Ockerse”

Franklin Furnace/Printed Matter people (i.e., ed ruscha &

beyond)

“Conceptualists -- John Baldesarri, Arakawa, Askevold,

& dozens of younger people i dont know. Ruscha. Richard
Long. Mel Bochner.” (Here again my caution on the quality
of the particular texts.)

“Music verging people -- Higgins, Mac Low, Knowles, Cage,

Ashley, Phil Corner, Amirkhanian, Jon Gibson”

bern porter & found texts

carl andre

di palma

“A few i came across in doing Toothpick -- Gnazzo, DeJasu,

Jim Rosenberg. Rsch is needed.”

karen eubel (overprinting of letters-texts) & other

younger artists (via susan)

photographs & photograms, poss reprints of handwritten

texts, calligraphy, graffiti

hart broudy (the “a” man that steve wrote a piece on)??
182  The Language Letters

Politics:

bruce on the state, &c., or a prose poem with the texture

of political science discourse

my “Palukaville” or its ilk

laura riding from The World & Ourselves or her current wrk

george oppen -- the relation of wrtng to politics

&c.

Sexuality:

“perhaps we cld involve people not central to our effort

like”

“Acker, Lally, Weiner, Tim Dlugos, Jane Delyn, Carolee

Schneemann, De Jong, or Alison Knowles’ wrk of accumulat-
ing things in Women’s Work, etc., Adrian Piper, Martha
Wilson, Jennifer Bartlett, Jacki Apple” & i wld add helen
adam, wendy walker, barbara baracks (?)

“Younger” poets for all issues:

palmer
dreyer
greenwald
rosmarie & keith waldrop
melnick
“Craig Watson”
watten
piombino
seaton
“Anthony Barnett”
“Howell”
tina darragh
 The Language Letters 183

doug lang
hejinian
linda stepulevage
lally
davies
coolidge
mayer
mccaffery
di palma
grenier
weiner (but newer stuff, def not the Journal)
&& people we come upon or people like karl young who i
hear is gd but have never seen the wrk, &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

as far as possible, we cld use wrk of people not directly

relevant but bringing out this side of them, &c., like
violi, walker, terry winch, maureen owen, charles stein,
&& (some people i’ve heard/seen but dont have the names of
here, i.e., needs rsch)

some “older” folks:

blaser on lacan or ----

nicholas catanoy (a rumanian poet, MD, who lived in

canada & is now in west germany doing exceptionally
fine language-centered wrk, unknown here, tho i have
started a correspondence with him)

rothenberg (maybe from the Big Jewish Bk)

higgins -- poetry

creeley

eigner
184  The Language Letters

Non-poets:

cavell

higgins sugg a name to me of an important german

philosopher/aesthetician whose name i have misplaced
for the moment -- but this is obviously a direction
to go in. steve might have some sugg here, too.

rchd foreman

schechner

chaikin

rbt wilson

-- perhaps one of these contributing to

politics or sexuality issue

“something intelligible on Lacan (or Derrida, etc.) --

maybe by Luigi Ballerini or Richard Milazzo at Out of Lon-
don Press”

Out-of-Print, &c.:

i.e., riding, hd (letter, diary??), djuna barnes (from the

poems of Repulsive Women), &c.

well, that’s it, for now. after you’ve made whatever genrl
additions & changes, the next step will be to narrow down
to specifics for the first few issues. (that is if you
want to join us in this project, wch i hope you do.)

charles
 The Language Letters 185

here are some titles to avoid --47

Salute to SoHo

Salad

Recurrence

Signifier

Meaning Magazine

Text

Up Against the Primal Lack

(or better:) Lacks’s [Lack’s] Gap Magazine

Rip Off

Fish

Ron Silliman’s Interview

Riposte

Wordness

Language Bound

Absence

Piffle

Just Another Poetry Magazine

47. See also a longer list of titles to be avoided, which Andrews and Bernstein compiled
from the archives, at [Link]
nate-titles-language-1977.
186  The Language Letters

Scat

Balm

Here are some to consider:

Letters

Comrades

Writing

Lack’s Gap

————

40. Ron Silliman to Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews

(2/17/77)

Charles (& Bruce, since i hope you’ll pass it on):

the great Letter has arrived, as many ideas as i’ve got-

ten in one envelope, in ages! Huzzah! i’ve hundreds of
thousands of thots, or so it seems, responses to a mil-
lion items in there. Rather than sorting them out (usually
thru the distortions of memory: simplification, exclusion
etc.), here they all are, as Ez wld say: a BLAST!

On editing: it has been my experience (1 -- w/ Tottel’s,

2 -- other mags, especially Occident (UC Berkeley) & Chi-
cago Review, 3 -- w/ my political editing for CPHJ et al.)
that collective editing (you in paragraph 2, p. 1, mention
an ideal of unanimity as a hoped for goal) tends to water
things down, unless done w/ one hell of a lot of care.
At Occident i had a chance to watch the operation first
hand, any significant work was inevitably controversial
(by college mag standards: significant meant a submission
by David Shapiro, to pull an example out of memory’s hat),
 The Language Letters 187

the tendency was always to omit such work, to include only

what all felt comfortable w/. The only way Melnick & i got
to have our gathering in the Chi Rev (summer 1970) of 15
young poets of the SF Bay Area (wch seems tame now, tho
it was just the controversial choices: Kyger & Bromige &
Stanley i’d still stick by) was to (1) salt our mine by
including Robin Magowan, who’s a nicer guy than he is a
poet, but who we knew to be held in high repute by the Chi
Rev crowd, (2) get Iven Lourie, Dick’s brother, to front
for us: he took over explicit responsibility, of the mag
for one issue, in return for wch he was to resign all edi-
torial responsibility, wch he in fact did! Second thot
on collective editing is that the best mags of the past
50 years (Blast, Transition, Criterion down to Caterpil-
lar & This) were always the “taste” of a single, highly
opinionated man. There is, however, an alternative body
of mags (Blk Mtn Rev, Evergreen (when it first came out))
w/ a larger editorial approach but also a larger pur-
pose. So: my impression is this: it shld definitely have
a LARGE goal (sizewise: aim for what The World does)(con-
tent: it shld be much broader than a poetry mag w/ a few
added concerns, but rather a journal of thought & action
in wch poetry is an integral concern (tho i’d have no hes-
itation abt publishing a # in wch no poems, nor refs to
poesy, were containd, if it got at something i wanted to
get to (e.g., a # on Lacan, or Forti or Wilson/Glass). In
that larger context, i think there shld be room for both
commitment & exchange (for example, if 2 of the 3 felt
strongly abt a work, it shld run -- 3’s a good # for such
an editorial collective approach) (on top of wch, i think
we have the rapport to pull it off). So i see a mag as a
situation where poetry is a major, but not overwhelming
concern.

3/yr is quite a bit (something Tottel’s 16#s in 6 years

has taught me, even w/ its highly restricted format). to
my mind, 2 slightly larger #s per year wld give us more
scope & sanity (it is possible to do 2 105 pp. #s w/ much
less effort than 3 70 pagers). It also will reduce mailing
188  The Language Letters

costs (if not postage under NY dist. service, at least the

cost of mailers) by 33%. 8½x11 side stapld is to my mind
the best way to begin, the square format actually costs a
certain amt of space available for type & gets bulky in
an unpleasant way w/ more than 60 pp. (tho a 60 pp. #1
(involving only 15 sheets of paper) might make sense).
Tottel’s #16 cost $250, a third of wch involvd postage,
w/ all collating & stapling done by hand, by me = $1.67
just to produce a single copy. This prints runs of 400,
wch makes sense to me as a decent beginning for a mag such
as this. my own $ contribution for the first #s is some-
thing wch definitely makes me hesitate: am living on $215/
mo right now & not sure how to make ends meet w/ that, let
alone chunk a cpl hundred straight into a mag. benefits
for the first #s might give us a good capital base. bene-
factors? never have been sure how to fund (typo of the day
there) such.

on the idea of getting back to “the old sense of letters”

(e.g. men & women of letters) -- that’s a bourgeois sen-
sibility i’d like to steer clear of if at all possible:
sounds like the worst of NYR. rather: writing as a coher-
ent part of the whole of human experience (wch means per-
haps special #s of specifically working class materials &
orientation). Eigner on bussing seems less to the point
(he doesnt live in Boston, doesnt use mass transit, has
decidedly liberal politics, etc.) than say Eigner on per-
sonal epistemology, on the Jewish tradition, on the role
of the physical in writing. Tom Mandel & i have both been
throwing the idea around of late of interviewing Oppen on
political issues as they have related to him, per se.

on the elsewhereness of certain types of writing (concep-

tualism, The Fox, etc.), i agree, tho i think we ought to
give a certain amt of room & thot to the whole idea of
atextualization (specifically where it’s been a response
to exclusion, as in the oral tradition of 3rd world poetry
in america): we run the risk of leaving a blind spot in
our approach if we dont recognize a certain legitimacy to
 The Language Letters 189

work wch isnt “a fully realized thing, in itself, as writ-

ing, there, in the magazine” (my sense of language cen-
terd writing is that it is the progressive writing of the
industrializd tradition, & that excluded groups -- includ-
ing women who’ve done more w/ the diary than any other
form, as well as oralism of 3rd world groups -- have pro-
gressive writing, wch we ought to include, but wch is not
necessarily language centered or even text centered).

on continuing Rothenberg’s tradition of using roots in the

mag: definitely. & w/ JR no longer connected to Alcher-
inga, we might think of utilizing his energy & connexions
vis a vis bringing in materials we’d otherwise miss. i
have no hesitations abt using the mag to bring in large
chunks of our own work, so long as we can avoid megaloma-
nia (wch i think we can): the collab as a # seems like one
good idea (tho it looks to me like it’s gonna be 200 pp.
before we’re done).

on poss special features list:

1) visual oriented writing (perhaps, tho not right away,

as there’s been lots on this already, e.g., the poesia
visiva # of Chi Rev just 2 issues back.

2) sexuality (yes, tho again, Shocks’s current # is on

androgyny & is almost a testament of what not to do under
this rubric): my impression is that this is still too
vague as topic.

3) politics (not radicalism (the term implies a liberal’s

commitment to revolutionary thot)): language & society,
say.

4) Legend (yup).

5) Language centerd writing & women (Hejinian wld be best

editor here perhaps).
190  The Language Letters

First #

Eigner: it wld be interesting, i think, beyond the idea

of prose, to engage him in correspondence on the issues
presented, formally, by his work & life & to print that
corresp. (much like the Antin-Spanos-Kroetsch letters in
boundary 2) -- his fiction is okay, but it involves sup-
pressing much of what his work is really abt (i.e., the
role of the margin), whereas nobody has bothered to try &
do much of his correspondence, wch has a presentness that
is terrific (i’ve thot often of a selected letters). an
essay by Watten on Eigner to accompany might also make
good use of the mag (in that Barry wld not slough such a
job & has a deeper understanding of Larry’s work than any-
one else i can think of, save possibly Grenier).

Coolidge, yes from that long prose work (the 1,000 page
poem), Mayer i’d say yes on, if we can get good work (still
am not convincd abt her work as a whole, tho Memory & Study-
ing Hunger & the novel in This are all first rate). Mac Low,
definitely, & i think we ought to make an effort to get, as
i did for T16, work wch wld not be acceptable elsewhere;
Grenier, yes (have lost touch w/ him, but Perelman wld have
the address). McCaffery, yes (also bpNichol & possibly TRG
work as well). Antin: maybe (one possible special # wld be
the 3 “linkd” talking pieces): am not sure i’m up to this
project at this pt. Not sure that’s where i want to direct
my energy at this moment. Stein: if poss. i’d like to get
an essay by Rothenberg on Stanzas in Meditation (or perhaps
by Dick Bridgman, who was a prof of mine), or by Hejinian.
Oppen wld have nothing to say on this, from my personal
experience of the man. Blaser wld talk abt himself. Creeley:
i’d like to see an essay on his own return to prose & what
that means. Beckett: i’d seek out permission to print (you’d
have a good chance of getting it), but wldnt risk the legal
tangles otherwise (in that sense, i’d love to reprint Ash-
bery’s “Turandot” poem from his first bk, have even askd him
pt blank, but have been refusd twice (why not reprint LZ’s
transmogrification of the Rexroth poem wch is in the Objec-
tivist anthology, we cld probably get permission from both).
 The Language Letters 191

Friedman on Wilson or Glass, or the decorative, sounds good

to me. i’d love, personally, myself, to do a piece on Forti
& Van Riper, on her metaphor of animal studies, their roles
of male & female (Peter’s macho is definitely a part of the
work, he uses it & she uses it to buffer her between herself
& audiences). John Ensslin sounds interesting (i’ve got a
good article, but horribly written, on reification by Terry
Kupers in similar vein, wch relates to our dyad): i’d have
to see that name piece: sounds like Herb Caen to me. “Index”
2 by BA: McCaffery on Mac Low sounds good: i’d like to get
something (thinking of the performance symposium at UWM
recently where both were present) on text or type by Karl
Young; something by Ray certainly; found texts (if the right
one). i’ve got a beaut, by the way, from the CIA denial
of my files, on the grounds that it wld reveal acronyms &
codes (!). Reprint of a paragraph idea sounds great (call
it ReViews or ReViews. Visual oriented writing: Toby Lurie
(is horrible idea: this guy uses poorly thot out avantism to
cover bland sentimentalism, worse than Kostelanetz, uh uh),
Ockerse (yeh), “music verging people,” maybe (much of those
guys who you mention are not news anymore, Cage, or never
will be, Amirkhanian): Porter, and Andre, sure, DeJasu defi-
nitely but Gnazzo & Jim Rosenberg (both of whom i know more
or less) are in the same boat as Lurie, wch is too often the
case w/ simple experimentalism (& one reason why i’ve always
steerd far away from use of the term as such).

on sexuality: i note that what you do is print list of

folks w/ different libido orientation than you or i, we
need a deeper idea than that w/ wch to proceed (my idea
for next Tottel’s by the way is a simple collection of
work by Hejinian, R Waldrop, Dreyer, Acker, Child, Weiner,
but not to be identified as a woman’s issue, perhaps Rae
& Carla Harryman as well, dont know); the list of ynger
poets all sounds good to me & i agree that we shld bring
in others who only partly come near to what our interests
are (Maureen Owen or Violi as you say): Blaser already’s
done his thing on Lacan, but maybe something else by him,
Nicholas Catanoy sounds interesting, love his name anyhow,
 192  The Language Letters

JR for sure, Higgins for sure, all the nonpoets sound good
(tho i dont know Chaikin): OP materials we ought to be
careful w/ the (c) laws abt, but yes i agree.

on a title: Letters is the best suggestion but it’s too

tame for me. Lack’s Gap isnt solid enuff & Comrades is
overdetermind to say the least, Writing sounds like it
comes from the Eng Dep of Missoula State Teachers Col-
lege -- ecchh! Off the type (another great typo) top of my
head, these come to mind:

x Rhizome (being the term used by some of Derrida’s pals

to contrast their view of knowledge as a root struc-
ture, rather than tree of meaning)
Sacco (if we want an upbeat name, a word wch is both
political in connotation & has that inventd language
look)
Rosta (name of the russian telegraph agency wch was
involvd in publication of mass propaganda, Maya-
kovsky usd to do cartoons on their windows, in fact
did 6,000 of them, all w/ lyriks)
Lef (name of the futurist group, wch stood for Left
Artists Front)
Punctuation (or alternatively Punktuation)
Lacuna
Cortex
x Red Letter (think i like that almost as much as Rhi-
zome)
1557
Karl’s Bad (as in caverns among other things)
Ucs. Rev
S/s
x Not Contradiction (like that)
Mag
x Sojourner Truth The Front
x Wajumbe (swahili for “people who bring the message”)
Bodymind

we need to give things a lot of thot: an exemplary tale:

 The Language Letters 193

a few yrs ago a local lobbying group was looking for a

name & logo to do radical (accurate term in this instance)
crim justice lobbying & hired a highly rated p.r. firm (or
rather, talkd them into a freebie), there was a goodly
sized number of folks in the group who wanted to stay away
from anything wch sounded too communist or revolutionary):
the p.r. firm came up w/ the name Citizens Advocating Leg-
islative Leadership, CALL & yrs truly (who wantd a politi-
cal name, upfrontness) let the group adopt it & use it for
a few months before pointing out that Call was the name of
the mag of the c.p. usa.

we also need to give the whole idea lots of thot. based on

what’s in yr letter, i’m still hesitant. a general rev. of
culture w/ language at the center of its focus is quite
a project for something wch proposes “at least a hundred
copies” -- we either need to do it (make a mag wch changes
the fucking culture) or not, but we sure dont need to
fail. i think we need to talk more abt

title
format
funding (cost it out)
distribution (talk to Plains Dist Service, say &/or Sand
Dollar)
size & timing
(i think we shld in fact plan the first 3 #s, put dead-
lines onto them, in succession & stay continually that far
in advance
(i also think we wld want a continuing interplay of more
disciplines than just writing & politics, dance for exam-
ple: i think you can reach more people w/ a mag wch has 3
or 4 basic subjects per issue + some others
the total devotion of a mag to a single perspective or
topic has a tendency to turn into little anthologies, of
use only to those who are already interested
(one wants to avoid turning into Io, say

we need 3 #s to turn in to a CCLM grants committee (if

 194  The Language Letters

that’s what we want to do) w/in a year; i’d rather do 2 or

3 benefits + charge a reasonable (& healthy) price for it.
somebody shld check w/ the East Coast print center as to
comp. costs (e.g., take over 3 or 4 mags wch have possibly
attractive designs & find out how much it wld cost to do
them). (Barbara Baracks is a genius at keeping costs down:
Big Deal 3 cost only $500 or less: maybe we shld “imitate”
that.)

other possible ideas for focuses: a feature on Simon J.

Ortiz, the pueblo poet (w/ articles by Bob Callahan,
Anselm Hollo, Lewis MacAdams, Rothenberg, all of whom know
the work), another on the diary as a woman’s form, some-
thing around all of the issues proposed by performance
pieces (the politics of textualization & alternatives
thereto), something on Dziga Vertov & the politics of film
form, there is literally a WORLD out there if only we want
to deal w/ it, whole as it is.

other title idee wch came to mind while i ate dinner (a

salad) during last paragraph:

Sprachgeist
Reference
Definition
x Present Tense (or Future Tense)
Determiners
What

another thot: do you know International Bulletin (a

biweekly put out by Internews, wch shld be available at any
political bkstore)? their format, only w/ the size doubled
(or tripled) might meet the 3/yr + give lots of room (con-
cisely) to the work. plus that somewhat more polishd sur-
face might enable us to reach 2 or 3 times the people.

another feature idea: translations of Kamensky &

Kruchenykh by Alexander Kahov & Jack Hirschman (who’ve
been doing a lot of work in the area).
 The Language Letters 195

thing i dont like abt the use of word Lack in the title is
that in gen’l usage (& our tossing around of it aint that)
is that it fails to make clear that it’s always there,
felt, present, suppressd & repressd (same problem w/ the
word Underdevelopment).

these, anyway, are my immediate responses to yr letter.

am gonna sleep on it & will of course be back in touch w/
more feedback. so, both [of] you (you too Bruce) give me
yr feedback to this letter. my feeling right now is posi-
tive but hesitant, meaning i think we need more definition
to all of this before i for one say yes let’s go ahead.
(hope you realize what kind of work is entailed, being
proposd by this.)

Love to you,

Ron

x = on re-reading
these seemed closest
to my thinking. RS

————

41. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman (2/26/77)

Dear Ron,

today read Bezoar, yr letter again, Naropa’s catalog, NY

Times [BA annotates: only to have something to read while
have a café con leché on Broadway. Deplorably informa-
tive propaganda.], bought groceries & ran & walked in Cen-
tral Park w/ Ellen, listened to Vaughan Williams & Nielsen
symphs & now Bob Seger’s Night Moves (source of such line,
& vocal concern in my gettin-near-done “Getting Ready to
Have Been Frightened,” which is one of the 3 pieces I’ve
been at work on, doing an hour each nite fore bed. The oth-
ers being “Play” and “Gloss/Camouflage” which is a send-up
196  The Language Letters

of the earlier “These” which you saw). Clear lighted day,

soft and bright warmth. UP. This as intro to a more memo-
like response to yr letter concerning our magazine plans,
and also: to note, as you know, I’ve not been of late much
of a correspondent. I’m now retooling things a mite, clear-
ing the decks (a phrase), so that things pressing do not
press as much. Feeling better abt that, which gives me more
confidence & energy, which in turn make me more responsi-
ble, etc.: a non-vicious circle, for a change. The former
one was: too many things to do leads to confusion & dis-
concert & sense of less hope leads to escape, evasion, and
irresponsible avoidance leads to matters piling up leads to
less confidence, etc. = vicious circle. Today, in fact, I
came to the most momentous decision I’ve had in a year on
my Empire & Society book, which was that the long drafts
and ideas I had for 3 long chapters at the end were, in
fact, not essential to the Vietnam material, even though
they would help elaborate it (but then so would just about
anything). This concerns material about theories of the
state, depoliticization, and legitimacy. I realized that
I’ve extended my work into these areas because I had to
think about them before the Vn. material was clarified &
because I simply had gotten interested in them. They kept
expanding (currently I have two 30 page “outlines” for 2
chunks I’d originally planned as mere chapters in E&S:
silly). Also, I’ve been slowly accumulating supplementary
material on the content of the original Vietnam chapters,
which will be more than enough for a complete book. And a
self-contained one. This additional material could be much
more elaborated, but in so doing I run the risk of los-
ing track of Vietnam. So, I (lightbulb) just won’t include
them. Huzzah; large release. And in fact what they are is
the beginning extended outline of my next book, which will
be a purely structural treatment of the political econ-
omy & sociology of the U.S. empire in the postwar period
-- something, as I said, about which I had to have to my
ideas straight before I could close out the specifically
Vn. book, but I realized (1) I didn’t need to elaborate
all of these ideas in the book, and (2) their successful
 The Language Letters 197

& imaginative elaboration would require a lot of length &

more (fascinating) research -- thus, another book. Sepa-
rate. So now I am less constipated (as Ellen remarked upon
hearing this): i.e., I can finish the E&S book much more
painlessly, and be well on my way to another. And the E&S
can be thus kept down to a more manageable size -- say,
350-400 pages -- without having to lop off any truly essen-
tial elaborative material. A strategic stroke to rank with
the invention of the laxative. Anyhow, I’m feeling much
better. Have, as well, in the last few months gotten to be
actually close friends with Charles (hello Charles), thus
inhabiting a different spirit of energy about aesthetic and
lit’ry matters, which gave rise to the whole talk about the
magazine anyway. And, I think, to more intent concern with
getting back to correspondence. From here on the letter
turns to business. Yours truly, Bruce.

*********************

Ron, yr letter was energetically inspiring. And I dont

see any unsurpassable problems arising in regard to the
mag, altho it will give rise to all variety of challenging
conundrums. Systematically (as I change sides on Seger):

1. Goal: I agree that this should be a large one

-- not a poetry magazine per se, but one where our con-
cerns about language serve as a criteria for articulating
a more comprehensive view of human life. Gradually expand-
ing, would I think be the easiest way to do that, how-
ever, which would mean more “literary” material at first.
At least in the first issue, which might advisedly be “a
poetry (or at least, writing) mag w/ a few added concerns”
rather than a “general review of culture w/ language at
the center of its focus.” Such an ambition could prove
vastly overambitious at the beginning, especially since
we have no coherent line already extant. Such a general-
ness would best develop in the context of our decisions
about writing & the context it should be seen in (some-
thing abt which I think our thoughts have been rather
198  The Language Letters

fragmentary heretofore, no?). Your notion of there ideally

being several (3 or 4) basic subjects per issue so as to
avoid becoming little anthologies, like IO: I agree. We
dont also want to become a hip Daedalus. Stephen or any
other kind. This would also allow us to reach a much more
diverse audience, but without losing the focus on writ-
ing & language. (For ex., an editor of Christopher Street,
a fancy New Yorkeresque gay mag here in NY, said he was
getting subs on the basis of their impressive ballet cov-
erage)! The poetry audience is too constricted, and con-
strictive, to nourish us, by itself, and I want to open
them up to this diversity of essentially interdependent
concerns. After all, if we dont perceive them as inter­
dependent, we will just be putting things together because
the 3 of us happen to be interested in them all. Thus,
my feeling that language & writing must stand near cen-
ter w/ other topics acting as cross-fertilizing vectors.
This should make choices easier as well, by providing some
operative criteria.

2. On “Letters”: that old sense of letters which

Charles mentioned cannot easily be seen as a bourgeois sen-
sibility but rather as an aristocratic one (two quite dif-
ferent things), as for example in the Frankfurt School [BA
annotates: & thus might seem less negative. See Birnbaum’s
piece in The Review of American Socialism]. Yes I agree
that we want to stress “writing (or language) as a coher-
ent part of the whole of human experience” and that the
old sense of letters too often implied the sort of unfo-
cussed class-stanced notion of literate gentlemen writing
about matters other than literature which concerned them
[BA annotates: which concerned as class members rather
than as writers]. In fact, if we dont use language as this
criteria, we are left with purely & complacently politi-
cal criteria as our choice-point: as if we could transfer
this tradition of letters by picking another class stance,
like that of the working class. I dont really think at
this juncture in America that we can do that, especially
given who we are. So here I take partial issue with the
 The Language Letters 199

implications of what both you & Charles say: neither an

unfocussed nor a class-stanced tradition of letters is
enough, but I dont find an anti-liberal leftism to be of
any much more use (as witness the deplorable sense of the
possibilities of art & language prevalent on the left). I
think we also should avoid the use of “bourgeois” in criti-
cizing each other’s (sometimes fairly casually meant) views
[BA annotates: !!]. No one will win that contest. In gen-
eral, I think what I suggest in #1 provides some semblance
of an alternative to older ideas of letters. And, Ron, I am
a little nervous about the implications of yr comments on
needed extensions of our focus. I wonder what you suggest
by “wch means perhaps special #s of specifically working
class materials & orientation” or to talk about our need to
include the “progressive writing” of “excluded groups.” [BA
annotates: i.e., are these of vital concern to us because
we are writers, or because of our political views, desired
class identification, guilt, etc.] My immediate reaction
was to think that the effort to accord “a certain legiti-
macy to work which isn’t a fully realized thing, in itself,
as writing, there, in the magazine” is not our place. It
has a taste, even in the term, of Progressive Labor to me.
It’s one thing to talk of “atextualization” as a response
to exclusion, as in the oral tradition, but it’s another
to state with any precision what the source of our shared
interest is expected to be in the face of texts that embody
specifically working class or 3rd World material. This,
to me, right now, without )admittedly( any clear sense of
your whole take, seems a more fruitful idea for an essay
than for an issue. Otherwise we end up with the “quota-­
liberal” tendencies of the recent attack on the American
Poetry Review or on WBAI. That is, why is such writing
“progressive” and what does that term mean. [BA annotates:
or does it need to be pointed out, as essay.] Your list
of “excluded” writers sent to Michael in regard to None48

48. None of the Above: New Poets of the U.S.A., ed. Michael Lally (Trumansburg, NY:
Crossing Press, 1976); cf. “All of the Above,” a poem Bernstein mentions in his letter of
March 4, 1977.
200  The Language Letters

assuredly touches on this difference. Other than yr idea

of having an issue on Simon Ortiz, this was the only indi-
cation of a difference of purpose or emphasis which might
take some real bridging. [BA annotates: Ron -- speaking w/
Charles after your talk w/ him, I realize I’ve missed yr
pt. Sorry. Such writing may well be of crucial interest --
as localized repression of certain possibilities.]

3. Editors. No problem here. Charles’ principle of

unanimity vs. the possibility of 2 against one. I think
you are right, that demanding unanimity in principle may
water things down. A collective approach can work with us
now. “we have the rapport to pull it off.” With 2 in New
York, and allowing the possibility of a work running if 2
are strongly in its favor, but with some vague semblance
of a one man veto if that opinion was partic. strong. If 2
were enough for a Yes, I’d be happiest if that coalition
of 2 always included one from outside N.Y. (that is, Ron,
toi): since Charles & I can more easily reach agreement in
a loose gradual fashion that may not be tough enough. So,
ideally, 2 could say yes if the 3rd were not adamant, and
as long as the 2 were not just Charles and me. Charles’
suggestion that he be managing editor makes sense, though
he is now working too. Here having 2 in one city helps.
And Susan to do layout: fine, although the phrase in
Charles’ letters “as well as visual art” troubles. This
is an area which suggests vital editorial-like decisions
& should be treated as such, whereas design/layout could
best, or easily, be done by one.

4. Size & Format. 8½x11 gets my vote for avoidance

of bulkiness. I will look for the Int’l Bulletin to see.
Other mags of this size [BA annotates: thus, folded] come
to mind: URPE journal, Cultural Correspondence, Velvet
Light Trap, Liberation, Antipode.

5. Frequency. 2 a year seems right, as you argue.

And several hundred copies if it’s affordable, which it
probably has to be if the project’s to work. With two
 The Language Letters 201

larger issues per year, not only more sanity, but it makes
it possible to have more than one special emphasis in each
issue, possibly 3 or 4 interlinked ones.

6. Funding & Distribution. Problems here, naturally.

On the latter, we can rely on the networks both you &
Charles mention, and get all the advice conceivable from
all other political & literary (etc.) magazines we see on
newsstands. Funding: we can set up benefits in these 2
cities, charge reasonable price, find out what the Print
Center would cost us to do, say, 300 copies of a ? page
issue, get advice from all other editors we can hold the
ears of, etc. [BA annotates: What would each of us suggest
as an ideal of pages? Once we get a consensus on a range,
we can then “cost it out.”] I think being realistic about
time (which I haven’t up till now been), that if we do 2
issues a year, we would likely get them out in the spring
and fall of 1978. That would give us plenty of time (for
saving money as well as for planning, which takes more
time than we’d imagine). If it could be sooner, it will
be, but I’d rather not be disappointed by needlessly ambi-
tious plans. Thus, all spring & summer to talk, all fall
to solicit & decide, and print in winter. Solicit etc.
both at once, yes, good idea. Also, maybe your financial
situation would look rosier by the time bills came due. If
we include especially well-known people in the first issue
(saving younger poets or not ladling up too many at first,
especially if we want some stimulus of sales at first).

7. Title. We have months to decide this one. These

seem of any interest to me now: Letters, Contradiction,
Front, What, Present Tense, Future Tense. These are to me
of less appeal: Rhizome, Red Letter, Wajumbe, Rosta, Lef,
Sprachgeist [BA annotates: all too esoteric]. Charles’ no
list was one of the funnier things I’ve read in a while.
These should also not be considered: Buzz Bomb, Agnew’s
Folly, Lack’s Flap, Divine Legitimation, Zit-gist (3-D?),
No-ness, Caterfiller, Verse, Counter-Spy, Angola, Con-
stipation, [BA inserts: 3rd World, 4th World, 5th World,
202  The Language Letters

Hiss,] Red Zinger, Ferry Across the Mercy, Jumbalaya, Pro-

gressive Writing, (Channel? Counterpoint?), Party Pack,
The 3 Of Us, Flash Poetry, Snot, Black Honey, Kaleido-
scope, Query, Altamont, Words from Big Pink, [BA inserts:
Pinko,] The Alger Hiss Review, Time, Life, Look, The New
York Review, Puck.

8. Possible Features. In line with what I said

above. a) Visually oriented writing -- here I suppose I
agree that it might not be the best for now, but instead
(as an alleviation of too much print) might be better
to include this as regular constituent. That’d give us
time to see what would best be focused on. I haven’t,
but will, seen the Chi Rev. b) Sexuality -- yep, may be
too vague as topic. Might be able to broaden it into a
whole nest of psychological concerns all of which overlap
with notions of language (in Freudian thinking, Gestalt,
Reich, bio-­
energetics, hypnosis, nonverbal communica-
tion, Peter Marin’s writing (see Dec. issue of Mother
Jones). [BA annotates: is any thinking going on at Naropa
or Esalen?]. c) Politics or language & society (although
the latter too vague) -- I’m not sure how the term “rad-
icalism” implies to you a liberal’s commitment to revo-
lutionary thought. What is revolutionary thot? And what’s
wrong with it, as defined? No problem in any case. Might
be good to get work from people like Richard Lichtman or
Jeremy Shapiro, say. Or on the language theory behind
Habermas, Offe, etc. All these comments here in addition
to Charles’. (d) Legend. Here I think we might include
parts of the (right, eventually several hundred page)
ms. as one of the several features in one issue. Maybe
for the 2nd issue. Maybe with a piece on collaboration,
as notion. (e) [parenthetically, or bracketedly, I didnt
know you were thinking of doing an issue of Tottel’s;
idea you mention sounds of interest, greatly so; what
sort of work is Child & Harryman engaged in?] (f) Roots
-- either as continuing integrated aspect or as spe-
cial features or feature. A la J.R. I think your idea of
involving him is perfect. In fact, would have no qualms
 The Language Letters 203

of having him as contributing editor on masthead, if he

wanted it. In fact, we might want to consider having not
only the 3 of us listed as the editorial collective (the
apt term, I think), but listing and having a permanent
group of contributing editors -- “utilizing his energy &
connexions vis a vis bringing in materials we’d otherwise
miss.” Who else might be of interest? Antin, Higgins, J.
Williams, Lally, Baracks, McCaffery, Bob Horvitz, Rich-
ard Schechner, Luigi Ballerini, Robert Morris, someone
from Socialist Revolution, . . . ?? This wouldn’t need to
dilute our control in a harmful way, and would assuredly
make it easier to get attention. (g) Women or “indig-
enous peoples.” . . . Other possibilities I’d want to
bring up: (h) Language & Theatre; (i) Translation; (j)
Dance (here involved with notions of time, texture, orga-
nizing principles, structure, & BODY tapping people like
Forti, Childs, Dean, Rainier, Jonas, Dilley, King, Dunn,
Brown, etc. (k) Orality and Speech; (l) Reading; (m) Nar-
rative; (n) Performance (this seems better adaptable to
our potential audience and central concerns than, say,
Vertov and film); (o) Cultural Hegemony; (p) [BA inserts:
possibly w/ (g)] Diary & Letters as form; (q) new think-
ing on linguistics or the philosophy of language, embrac-
ing discussion of Derrida, Lacan, etc. (r) Conceptual and
post-conceptual art. (s) Text (thus providing a place for
discussion of textuality, atextualization, etc.). [BA
inserts: possibly with (n), etc.]

True, much of our choice on these would depend on what

sorts of contacts we are able to make, for I guess such
successful editorial directings would depend on that.

Maybe we could use these letters, as “list for discussion”

and just add to it and flesh it out with our feelings as
we go along.

9. On your thoughts on the people suggested for pos-

sible being there in the first or second issues (“Be Here
Now” another title not to consider).
204  The Language Letters

Eigner --- correspondence better than prose, good idea.

And short essay by Barry sounds fine.

Coolidge --- from the long prose, a short piece if he

would agree to that, which is very uncertain.

Mayer --- agree, though wonder what you mean by feel-

ing that Memory, Studying Hunger and the This work
are all first rate but not being convinced abt her.
My feelings about the “novel” or “new NY School-y
poems” (your, contrasted with Charles’ characteriza-
tions) are close to Charles’. Haven’t yet read the
Kulchur book. Would like to have her in if we could
get top piece. Both she and C.C. possibly over done
past possibility of interested readership. Maybe
letters, or journals, or essay (the latter, from
Coolidge) would be better.

Mac Low --- yes & yes with yr specific thot.

Grenier / McCaffery (though Nichol much less likely to

find agreement), TRG (related to other shared con-
cerns, if we can find out where they would be moving
in any given time) [BA inserts: (maybe on text, or
reading)].

Antin --- like Charles’ idea here (letter/response)

better than publishing any more Talks. [BA inserts:
Two books enough for now?]

Stein --- Rothenberg or Bridgman, fine. What would

Hejinian have to say: you are the only one of us to
have met her, so would be curious. What about Dun-
can? Agree that Blaser on Oppen not appropriate.

Creeley --- yes, great to have a piece on the switch to

prose. [BA inserts: Or other things. How about let-
ters from him? (I wonder if Barry Alpert knows of
any great archival treasures: a contemporary version
of the NYR’s reprinting of Edmund Wilson letters.]
 The Language Letters 205

Beckett --- might be too long to reprint. Could run

short excerpt in form of review. Haven’t seen Ash-
bery’s “Turandot.” Dont remember LZ’s transmogrifi-
cation of Rexroth, but am intrigued.

Silliman on Forti & Van Riper --- dont know their work
(though Forti’s book sure didnt impress). Will see
them this spring performing. [BA inserts: Tell me
more.]

Ensslin on schiz --- sounds interesting, yep, but let’s

have a look.

Name piece --- let’s have a look.

“Index” 2 by BA --- what say? [BA inserts: Might just

scatter it about some. (As with quotes in Monthly
Review.)]

McCaffery on Mac Low (possibly extending to Cage) ---

check.

Karl Young on text or type --- sounds possible. Any

specific sense of it?

ReViews --- sounds particularly useful. Charles & I

are hoping to see the possibilities of that in some
short collaborative review-texts this summer. I have
a long list of possible books.

[BA inserts: Out of Print or older people --- maybe espe-

cially letters or journal extracts. (H.D.? Stein? D.
Barnes? etc.)]

DiPalma --- definitely, though possibly his rubber

stamp pieces are most “new” of his recent work,
which has not been prolific otherwise.

Found texts --- would love to see that CIA denial. Oth-
ers.
206  The Language Letters

Visual oriented writing --- I’m not a strong supporter

of Lurie’s work (Charles knows him), but I think
you may be a little off in the negation: his “avan-
tism” seems to be in one corner and his bland senti-
ment in another. I see them as separate & separable
bodies of work, rather than elements freely mixed
together in all pieces. There are “pure” examples of
each type, and his visual things are at times o.k.
by me. This is also true of DeJasu, whose “poetry”
is dismal sentimentalizing (I saw tons of it for
my Tpick research), but whose visual things are
removed from that. I still am not as taken with him
on any account as you are, though. Ockerse is seem-
ingly solid. Did you see his work in Intermedia? [BA
inserts: Others. Steve tuned in here.]

Music-verging people --- not sure what there is in the

way of actual interesting texts. [BA inserts: Easy
access to it here in NY. Maybe a contributing editor
in such area? or advisor?]

Porter --- check, but hard to get top work.

Andre --- he has unbelievably good pieces from the

’60s, if we can get him to spring them.

Higgins --- also, hard to wade through an unwieldly

body of work (more of a problem even than with Mac
Low).

Rothenberg --- check, though similar worries as with

Higgins apply.

Poems by Silliman, Andrews, Bernstein --- agree, also

agree to holding in check our megalomania. We won’t
be exactly “loss leaders.”

Friedman --- let’s see.

 The Language Letters 207

More peripheral people: here I’m maybe more hesitant

than you or Charles. I really cant see work by Violi
or Owen, say, as being sufficiently important. I’d
rather have, say, Burroughs. Who else? Kyger, God-
frey? Whowhowhowhowhowhowhowhowhowhowhowhowhow?

Letters.
Journals.
Nonexpository Prose (as with Kostelanetz’s essay
anthology, or TRG).
Translations --- dont know the Russian ones you men-
tion. [BA inserts: Etc. (J.R., here, definitely)
maybe the Jewish material.]
Sound Poetry texts --- for ex., are there any Dada or
Schwitters texts unpublished or un-reprinted? [BA
inserts: European work? 4 Horsemen?]

In addition to the poets mentioned above, these

(largely lesser known) seem of interest for 2nd or
later issues, for example:

Armantrout Wieners Lang Sondheim Waldrop

Catanoy Weiner (L. & H.) Palmer Greenwald Waldrop
Taggart Barnett Howell Lally Meyer
Piombino Seaton Melnick Perelman Perlman
Watten Hejinian Faville Child Acker
DeJong Bartlett Stamos Watson Friedman
Davies Young Stepulevage Darragh Dreyer

[BA annotates: Ron -- I’m now out of steam (though there’s

some interesting things in the Naropa catalog (e.g., Char-
lotte Linde) & I think of TDR as admirably exemplary in
another field. It’s hours after I begun. Charles will see
this next.]

Love you,

Bruce

————
208  The Language Letters

42. Charles Bernstein to Ron Silliman and Bruce Andrews

(3/4/77)

ron (& bruce),

well here i am at my new typewriter, already the fifth

day back on the job, everyone here actively looking for
new jobs, barbara, the person in the next ofc, just leav-
ing mine after talking abt how one of the other people was
insulting her & how upset she was. here go some thoughts
about the magazine, wch i shld have written earlier since
i’m holding up bruce’s letter.

when the first amorphous idea for doing a magazine entered

my mind i guess i must have thought abt doing a personal
selection of what i thought wld be the best/most interest-
ing &c. wrtng & the thought of doing just another poetry
magazine didnt really interest me since, in that case, i’d
rather publish books. when i started talking abt some idea,
though, for some kind of magazine, with susan, & then
bruce, it immediately attracted me to do it collectively,
just because it wld tend to move the magazine away from a
personal expression of what interests me to something that
would include a variety of concerns, perspectives, &c. its
true though i didnt bring to mind that “it wld change the
culture” because, until i got yr letter, i hadnt really
been thinking that big, i wldnt tend to say that on my own
anyway, but it confirmed my sense that if a magazine is to
be done now it needs to be done by a group of people
because any one person simply couldnt encompass the various
(& possibly even contradictory) directions & ambitions that
need to be in a magazine thats gonna really be something,
in itself, in this world. the exchange of letters so far is
very encouraging to my initial sense of the necessity of
involving several people (originally it was even thought to
have more than three editors plus susan but more on this
later) -- & i think that whats valuable is that we each are
expressing compatible (i think) but distinct views of what
shld be in & what it shld do & that seems to me not
 The Language Letters 209

something to get over but something to stay with, that is,

i dont think we need a consensus as much as an agreement. i
think i am speaking here to the problems that you (by you
in this i mean ron) wrote abt in respect to yr previous
experience with group editorship. i dont think we need to
all develop a single perspective or that we in every
instance have to get behind the other person’s perspective
so that each person feels “if i were doing this myself i’d
want just this in my magazine” wch is what i mean by con-
sensus (a kind of piercian empathy notion with the ideal
for agreement on editorial matters -- being that we’d col-
lapse into one person by putting ourselves each in the
other place of the other or some middle place between us
where we can all be close by to home but not in it). but
theres got to be an underlying faith in each other that
each of our separate perspectives, when really expressed,
is compatible with the general concerns of the magazine,
that it is those separate concerns, specifically in their
differences, that give the necessary scope to the magazine.
now i say “when really expressed” because i know that
everything i say is not necessarily something that genu-
inely reflects what i believe -- i.e., that “person of let-
ters” thing was rightly criticized. so i dont mean that we
dont push each other abt the things/ideas that strike us as
wrong or off the wall in each other’s views -- but the
point isnt so much to bring the other guy arnd to my point
of view as to make all judgments stronger, more intentended
[intended]. the value of the three of us doing this
together is that we each will bring into the discussion
people/ideas that wld not occur or wld be rejected if they
did occur to another of us. (& also challenging the inclu-
sion of things that seem unacceptable -- that is my saying
well i’d like to include violi & owen & bruce saying well i
wldnt but if yr going to include something in this mode
then owen is unacceptable & possibly i wld be satisfied
with certain poems by violi. my own objections to “concep-
tual” material is of a similar nature, that is, my suspi-
ciousness doesnt preclude my willingness to include any-
thing that doesnt fully live up to my remark abt the wrtng
210  The Language Letters

being there on the page a fully realized not outwrdly

referring piece but when such material gets proposed i
think my perspective as to exactly what of it to include &
what not to will be useful & that the intersection in wch
we all agree on using a piece will be an expression of the
aesthetic of the magazine & one wch is different than
either of us singly might have come up with. in a way i
feel all i’m saying here is obvious & that it is unneces-
sary to say, but i’m interested in talking abt it to help
clarify the tone & the purpose of our preliminary editorial
discussions. i understand to be one of yr criticisms, &
anyway it is one i wld make myself at this point, that my
initial letter simply provided groupings of names and gave
no real sense of what the magazine was specifically trying
to do beyond a collage of a variety of interesting materi-
als. i think its necessary to define more clearly what uni-
fies the selections & i agree that simply putting gd mate-
rial side by side & letting the juxtapositions somehow take
the place of a thought out aesthetic/politic is not a good
way to go. but still, right now, i dont know quite how to
put it into words & the easiest thing is of course to just
go ahead with the collage principle, refining the elements
of the collage but avoiding this central problem. “changing
the culture” is really an ambition & to this i’d like to
add my own compatilbe [compatible] one, though one wch is i
think distinct & is another example of the value in this
situation of having more than one, even competing, even
contradictory, ambition for the magazine. mine is for a
kind of modesty. i think all of us operate some of the time
out of a sense of trying to locate, or trying to be inside,
some central place & often this ends up with defining our-
selves as the center & oftimes it ends up as feeling left
out of some center & defining it as a cohesive thing wch
has an inside & trying to get into it or being resentful
that we cant or being disappointed in it when we arrive
there and find it was no center at all but just another
grouping. its what i hate most abt the SoHo atmosphere of
self-preoccupation and self-importance as reflected in a
recent Christopher Street article that i heard abt (i’ve
 The Language Letters 211

not seen it & may well be doing that piece an injustice)

wch set out to name & photograph the new New York 200 --
i.e., the 200 key SoHoites, leaders of tmrw & glamour of
today -- taking the image of SoHo 200 after the old New
York 400, i.e., high society. i’m not saying that the con-
stant phenomenon of listing who’re the best writers, who
counts, whos overimportant & whos underimportant, is always
a bad thing & i dont put myself outside that activity
either since i want to be recognized, thought important &
even more want the kind of work i’m doing, we’re doing, to
be recognized, thought important, but its also true that
most of that activity has more to do with ego than art &
all we have to do is look to some of the more artistically
empty art scenes where this same activity goes on to see
that the form itself is unbounded to quality. so what i
mean by modesty is that i’d like to somehow find an alter-
native way of presenting whats significant, actively dis-
couraging formulations like the “SoHo 200” not just by not
putting that kind of attitude forward (of wch there is i
think little danger) but by showing another way than:
“these are the key people and they count & anyone outside
of these key people dont count and here are the fringe peo-
ple & they dont exactly count but are close by & all others
shall be nameless.” i got a real glimpse as to how this can
be accomplished both in talking to you (ron) on the phone
abt yr reading series & in yr letter when you challenge
certain areas where i was being overly non-inclusive. for
example, yr idea of having a reading of students of lowell
who stopped writing & another of people reading their very
first poems both provide ways of including people by pro-
viding a particular context to look at the wrtng wch makes
it interesting. similarly yr idea of wanting to publish a
variety of “underdeveloped” wrtng & even calling
language-centered writing a specific choice for underdevel-
opment seemed right on. special focuses in issues will
probably provide the best or anyway most consistent place
for this -- diary/journal is another form of “underdevelop-
ment” that probably involves certain specific social/polit-
ical needs of woman at this time, & i cld even see
212  The Language Letters

something in terms of the poetry of woman trying to work

out the specific conditions of being a woman in a personal/
political mode that is represented by the best of sexton or
plath (& in some of the prose work of rich) plus a number
of others who publish in Amazon Quarterly, &c.; possibly
some of the specifically gay male poetry as another form of
“underdevelopment” is another possibility. now i’m not,
lest there be concern, suggesting we print bad poetry or
anything that smacks of quota liberalism, but rather am
suggesting we look into various modes that for reasons of
preserving their own political/sexual/ethnic integrity &
tradition have not entered into the “mainstream” (a choice
wch has generally meant becoming academic, incidentally). i
suppose this is where a number of remarks that you (ron)
make in yr letter, e.g. abt ortiz, “specifically working
class materials,” tho what is the big Q & i am glad to have
on record bruce’s perspicuous comments in his section #2
because, again, this is part of what i was saying above, i
want to see his concerns fully met in respect to all
“underdeveloped” and special area wrtng & i think it can be
done. on the one hand -- in respect to “working class”
materials we have work like studs terkel’s oral histories
wch tho i’m not completely wild abt are worth thinking abt
-- people putting into words their perceptions about gov-
ernment, work, sex (actually shere hite’s initial bk,
before The Hite Report, was one of the best collections of
writing on sexuality since she published the complete ques-
tionnaire answers instead of breaking them up by section
the way the later bk is organized. what you get in the ear-
lier bk (Sexual Honesty for Women) is 10 pp. and longer
texts describing the whole of the woman’s sexual attitudes,
feelings & practices with a direct “non-literary” language
that is a remarkable testament to how well people can write
when they really want to get something they know out. my
own first section to “Three or Four Things” is an attempt
to get at the experience of the workplace & i think that a
special focus on the workplace might be a possible entry
point into this area. but the question to me is exactly
what kind of wrtng exists that comes out of the working
 The Language Letters 213

class life -- we dont want stuff abt the life (i.e., Social
Realism or Look Back in Anger or Death of a Salesman).
maybe diaries, journals, &c. exist, maybe documents from
the workplace -- e.g. something correlative to the cover of
Tottel’s 16. part of my concern, though, & here i link up
with bruce’s remarks in the bottom of his section 2, is
that i dont really know right now what exists in this area
& feel the possibility that it does get off into a kind of
theoretical issue that ends up with concerns over equal
representation & the BAI analogy is much to the pt. (i do
miss that station.) rothenberg’s work in Technicians &
Shaking are related to all this. Technicians was actually
an important influence on me & to me its a model of how to
do a difficult gathering of neglected or misunderstood work
with absolute attention & primacy to the quality of the
wrtng itself (rather than the ideas, historiography,
anthropology, politics, &c.). i remember in my one conver-
sation with you in SF, before we left yr apt to go over to
that bar, you expressed reservation abt what jerry was
doing & it was significant for me to hear in that phone
call the other day that you were changing yr mind, coming
arnd to it more. to me, the rothenberg model is one to keep
in mind when venturing into areas where the work is not by
those several dozen people who [we] feel in a similar place
with. for instance, although i didnt fully like all the
poems in part one of Revolution of the Word i never felt
that anything shld not have been there because his specific
selections & his context for them made sense to me & it all
read like important work that i wanted to know abt regard-
less of whether i personally liked it as much as something
else. other areas of “underdeveloped” wrtng that i’m inter-
ested in for special features are schizophrenic wrtng & in
general writing of the “deranged,” prisoner’s wrtngs --
that is wrtngs of the incarcerated, the institutionalized
(you’d obviously be a gd source here), children’s wrtng --
but maybe of diff sort than what koch & kohl have shown us,
Canadian wrtrs (i lived in Canada & was alwys very wary of
their sort of self-conscious underdevelopment & regionalism
& ultimately think its probably a mistake & yet theres
214  The Language Letters

steve & hart broudy & eldon garnett, on the one hand, & on
the other theres a large body of work influenced by the
vastness & sparseness of the country some of wch is so
fully lived, carried to its maximum possibility, that its
actually gd stuff -- anyway if theres anything to be done
with poetry that is deeply affected by the natural land-
scape i expect you’d find it in Canada & not in brautigan
or American pastoral). then theres the historical & here
theres enormous amnts of material by the futurists, the
constructivists, unknown stuff by schwitters, &c. -- wch
wld basically be a continuation of jerry’s wrk in R of the
W. & then theres European wrk -- of wch steve seems to know
a lot as well as dick higgins (e.g., gombrich is now wrkng
on a long “prose” looking piece, &c.). then theres a poss
interesting section on the renunciation of wrtng -- obvi-
ously laura riding jackson comes to mind but so does joan
la barbara (maybe an interview with her on why she gave up
wrtng becasue [because] she felt that in her newly devel-
oped form of “singing” she was able to communicate in a
deeper, more direct, “pre-­
linguistic” way -- a thought i
suspect as being absolutely wrong but very interesting) &
charlie morrow (whose wrk, again, i dont in general like
but whose position as a principal worker in form of “under-
development,” i.e., deliberately going back to the oral, to
breathing, to chant, to the tribal, is worth looking at).
of course oppen’s inability/refusal to write for that
thirty yrs is still another case of the “renunciation” of
wrtng, tho bet we cant get him to say more we cld at least
quote that brief section from Ironwood in this context.
here also, an essay by you on dance -- the word being in
the body as you sd on the phone -- might be appropriate -- i
suspect more so than a whole issue on dance -- seems to me
i’d like to deal with dance within the context of a special
section like this one of the renunciation of wrtng. (-- also
diary/journal as a special foucus [focus] seems gd.)

seems to me that i’m primarily addressing yr letter since

bruce & i have the opportunity to talk on the phone (& in
person!). things wch seemed to be generally agreed on so
 The Language Letters 215

far i wont reiterate. i’d like to see if we cld at some

time make a dec to make this discussion semi-public, i.e.,
i’d like to be able to say to some people “i’m working on
a magazine idea what do you think abt the poss of . . .”
but am keeping absolutely still abt it now. like yr way of
putting it: “a journal of thought & action in wch poetry
is an integral concern”. . . . wldnt see a whole issue on
lacan but prhps on structuralism or French thought &c.
(dont quite like those, but i mean something in wch lacan
is one element in a set). nor do i see a whole issue on
wilson/glass, for one wilson is continually written abt
in NY -- but maybe a special section on glass/monk/reich/
reilly/palestine/young (lamont not neal)/cale/gordon with
articles by people on the inside of this like mac low &
weiner . . . (what wld be interesting here is this move-
ment to a hypnotic, repetitive minimalism vs the other
tradition in new music of highly composed atonal music,
isolated notes, &c.) (my typing is even worse than usual
today & by today i actually mean friday cause for the last
few lines its already monday & i’m back at work -- weekend
big event lally’s absolutely great rdng at Anthology Film,
esp. “All of the Above” (from Big Deal) & “Hardwork,” feel
with this that hes no longer doing the best of the formal
personal poetry but has actually entered into text itself,
where the language is central & density is all. anyway, my
typing, maybe its the new typewriter, maybe my brain, i
just dont know. . . .)

EDITORIAL decisions, &c. i go along with bruce’s formula-

tion in respect to dec making process among the three of
us. susan’s role needs to be clarified, since i think she
can contribute more than just the mechanical wrk of lay-
ing out, &c. i shld have included a brief thing she wrote
on the mag in my initial letter but inexcusably left it
out. it comes out of a conversation we’ve had for yrs on
the value of having visual art -- not illustrations -- but
gd -- great -- stuff in “literary” mags, wch never hap-
pens. she says: “I am concerned with getting good visual
art that is not illustration of ‘literary’ material but
216  The Language Letters

stands on its own in relation to the specific focus of the

magazine in general. Literary magazines have tradition-
ally presented the worst possible ‘art’; here we have an
opportunity to present side-by-side with language-centered
wrtng, etc., visual art that articulates similar concerns.
specifically, the kind of work that is represented at
Franklin Furnace and Printed Matter seems relevant, i.e.,
‘artist’s books’ such as those by Ruscha, LeWitt, . . . &
a number of younger people. Also there is graphic wrk that
incorporates words -- Barry, Weiner, etc., a range of poss
for photographs (blow ups, close ups) of inscriptions,
graffiti, found wrtng. Photograms, photo collages & pho-
tographs -- tho expensive to reproduce wch is obviously a
restraint -- all seem relevant to the concerns of the mag-
azine.” seems to me bruce’s idea of an advisory editorial
board is relevant here -- but i see it not as “names” to
attract attention to us but as a wrkng grp of people who
we have regular access to & who agree to do rsch for us.
susan wld fit in here as a resource to artists wrkng in
areas similar to her own. jerry rothenberg, as you & bruce
both say, wld be very valuable, esp. for the historical
stuff. higgins seems to know abt European wrk & is in gen-
eral contact with people we might want to know abt. lally,
too. steve, obviously. hejinian seems more relevant right
now than baracks, tho i dont really know enuf abt her to
say. my idea, here, anyway, is that an advisory bd is gd
but it shld be active.

FORMAT. am right now split between the two possibilities

of doing basically 8½x11 pages. one (a la yr standard mag-
azine from Ramparts to Time) is 8½x22 folded in half, wch
involves staples in the middle. the other is side stapling
8½ x 11 pages and gluing a cover to it (called false per-
fect) that makes it seem like a bound book. Big Deal 3 is
like this. as bruce pointed out to me, we cld even stamp
the title on the rib. but, sadly, those covers often come
off -- its not a totally great way to bind.

i go along with yr two paragraphs of specific commentary

 The Language Letters 217

beginning “eigner:” as well as bruce’s remarks in his sec-

tion 9. havent yet been able to really appreciate dejasu
at all, tho, & wld not be enthusiastic abt using his stuff
as of now. lurie is all the things you say & has admit-
ted to it in correspondence to me, but i do think he has
a small body of wrk wch doesnt fall into that hole. (the
pblm with him & maybe amirkhanian & beth anderson & poss
even, tho hes in a diff class entirely, jackson, is the
essentially musical orientation of these people, wch leads
their content to places better left alone.)

TITLES. like Wajumbe & Rhizome but think they’re too

obscure. Contradiction is too “epate” for me, & tho i
like Not its prob too vague for a title. Red Letter is
too Soviet (oh! i’m gonna get some criticism for that).
yr right abt the prblm with “lack” & “underdelopment”
[“underdevelopment”] (i was hesitant to use it above but
seemed convenient for this discussion) implying a sense
that situations exist in wch these states do no occur.
Front is gd but it has the same prblm -- in this sense
What and That Which are better. dont like Past Tense or
Present Tense -- the last because it has a kind of Temps
Moderne feel & is “presence” any better a code word than
“absence” (& how abt Absence, wch is like Lack & Front,
&c. & how abt it.)

gd idea for a focus on performance issues. . . . altho i

can see the progmatic [pragmatic/programmatic] necessity,
hope it wont be nec (as bruce brings up) to keep down the
number of unfamous in the first issue -- since to me thats
part of the commitment too. but then, realism & all. i
know.

well, thats abt all for now. get back to us soon.

love,

Charles

(P.S. joe chaiken is the person from the Open Theater.)

218  The Language Letters

————

43. Ron Silliman to Carole Korzeniowsky (3/8/77)

Dear Carole,

if I were the sort of individual who utilized a spiritual

vocabulary to describe the phenomenology of everyday life,
I’d say there was an element of fate or inevitability (or,
possibly, grace) that a book such as Breastwork wld wend
its way into my mailbox. I’m not, however, that sort: I
don’t think that it’s a great fact of the 20th century
that 2 individuals, Pound & Stein, pointed out almost all
of the interesting white literature of the first 40 years
of the century: anyone who fell w/in the definition of
interest sooner or later worked up the hierarchy of pos-
sible relationships until they got there &, at that pt,
became visible to all. Because they had social imagina-
tions (wch not everyone has), Stein & Pound became the
nodes of that possibility -- but it cld have been Kreym-
bourg or Fletcher or anyone else: it is just that such was
the archaeology then of knowledge becoming public.

All of
wch sez what? Breastwork is a brilliant, gifted, work, of
the highest order. It has that clarity to wch one ascribes
the phenomenon of a Necker cube. Its key word (I’m con-
vinced of this): is luden (inter- and a- --ed). To present
you w/ “feedback” (e.g., to say that possibly a few arti-
cles cld have been omitted, being as they are generally
the least useful terms in any speech chain, or that some
terms tend towards a subjectivism wch the work as a whole
seeks to get away from, e.g., “enormous” (what does that
word mean?), that order of response wld I suspect be of
less use to you, than to provide you w/ a mechanism for
getting it to the people who right now are constructing,
as you are, the essential map of our time.
 The Language Letters 219

Let me put it
another way: this book is the proposition of an exactly
objective perceptive machine, & becomes, thru exactly that
fact, exactly subjective: Necker’s cube, transcendence.
It is as clear a formulation of what in reality confronts
any attempt to write as I have seen in years. If you’re
capable of this quality work each time out, then you’re
a major writer right now, it is as simple as that. “In
the interlude of bed and board . . .” = language pointing
to the entire universe of meaning, wch is always pres-
ent in the phenomena at hand if only we grasp that. Your
most descriptive sentences (wch both present the concept
of knowledge as the field of vision seen almost as page,
canvas or screen, what Derrida calls writing as such) are
I think your finest. It takes courage to admit the possi-
bility of such language: most writers tend/admit only the
partial, leaving the whole implicit, not out of styliza-
tion but fear, their inability to grasp the larger unity
wch at the same time contains its own negation. Consider
your work in relation to, say, Michael McClure: everything
he writes (see “The Skull” in September Blackberries as
exemplary to this) is the announcement of the impulse to
articulation, that writing wch takes place within the body
as such. Wch is at once why his poems always are terrible
and boring & why at the same time he is a major writer:
the constancy of that problem. Another key term in your
book is blurred (wch is connected to the word detected,
another key to your book): it is a term wch conceals a
great deal of information. In just wch way are the words
blurred? Is it that, overlaying one another, that tapes-
try (in just this sense that Kyger gave to it by using it
as the title to her first book) of sound in wch phoneme
over phoneme buries the morphemic, that overdetermination
(to use a term out of Freud by way of Lacan) of data, wch
is the constant fact, that we have to detect our lives,
or, as the French say, deconstruct our reality in order
to apprehend it, knowing even as we do that we don’t and
can’t, that we cld have done it an entirely different way
and wld have arrived at the same point wch is both truth
and impossibility? (In this sense, deconstruction, wch is
220  The Language Letters

the meaning I give to your word, wch occurs at least twice

in the book, detect, is precisely what Marx means by dia-
lectics, such that this is profoundly Marxian prose poetry
in a way that the optical illusion of socialist realism
will never attain.)

The most useful thing I can do for you is not to give you
such feedback as “how to do it better” since I doubt that
is even possible, but a mailing list of the most intel-
ligent readers & writers of what I take to be our common
generation. You should send each a copy, perhaps w/ a note
to the effect that I said “read this” -- thus you will
move into public domain, in the most useful sense of that
phrase. So that your work will not simply be the private
secret between yourself & a few lucky friends. This may
be an expensive (relatively) proposition, but I honestly
think it is the only responsible thing to do. I learned
a long time ago that a mailing list is one of the most
essential, least understood, tools in the world (& this,
essentially, is just what Pound & Stein offered to those
around them, from Zukofsky and Oppen to Hemingway and
Picasso, a mailing list). Thus your work will be placed
w/in their field of vision &, hopefully, you’ll become
increasingly aware of their own work, wch has direct rel-
evancy to your own & wch in fact is the context wch gives
your book great meaning.

A friend of mine, a woman who began as a poet (& quickly

was recognized & successful as such w/in a specifically
feminist framework) & gave that up to be a full time com-
munist organizer for a Trotskyist organization & who is
now a Gestalt therapist working w/ emphasis on body work
(& the unity of that progression as a way to knowledge is
something to think about!), said to me yesterday that she
thinks that right now it is easier for women to do the
essential work, because it is for them a real problem,
where for many of the men of our time (& this describes
exactly what happened to that whole generation of New York
poets around Frank O’Hara) there is not the problematic
 The Language Letters 221

aspect, so there is no need to proceed w/ much energy

or force, wch ends up as laziness & a casual poetry of
entropy, finally sad & useless to all. & I agree w/ her,
women do have it easier precisely because they have it
harder & that that resistance is essential for anyone to
make the originary thrust wch is the key to great work:
talent, finally, is not brains or gift, but willpower &
drive & a refusal to stop -- wch means for you to be as
aggressive w/ this as you can & to take it w/ full seri-
ousness, for your work & self warrants it, everyone shld
read you & take you w/ just such seriousness. I get 300
books in the mail each year, of wch only 10 are really
worth the effort to rip open the envelope & of wch one or
two change my understanding of the world. Your work falls
into that last category. Treat it as such & demand that of
others.

Here is the list. It excludes certain people (such as

Bob Grenier) who are essential for you to [know] partly
because they’re impossible to locate at the moment and
partly because they’re so crazy that it wld be hard to
imagine them getting into your work right now (this is
a multi-part process, & I wldnt want you to waste your
money: first put your work in the hands of the essen-
tial writers of the late 70s, & thru them you’ll become
known, an object of fact, by all the good ones -- & there
are some several hundred good writers alive right now,
tho everybody thinks there are fewer because of all the
jealousy and fear about our work & lives wch this deathly
culture of capitalism breeds -- & thru them to all the
writers, hence to the culture as a whole, by wch process
you change the culture by becoming the culture).

Rae Armantrout
Bruce Andrews
Kathy Acker
Barbara Baracks
Charles Bernstein
Clark Coolidge
222  The Language Letters

Ray DiPalma
Michael Davidson
Alan Davies
Lynne Dreyer
Curtis Faville
Lyn Hejinian
Carla Harryman
Paul Kahn
Michael Lally
Jackson Mac Low
Steve McCaffery
Bob Perelman
Kit Robinson
Jerry Rothenberg
John Taggart
Barry Watten
Rosmarie Waldrop
David Wilk
Hannah Weiner
Karl Young
Geoff Young

If you think the list is slanted, you’re right, but that

is because the cultural politics of this nation create
just such clusters of the arts, contexts in wch it can
grow & transform itself, since transformation is what it
is all about. It is a frightening truth that the control
of reality is in the hands of less than 30 people (or,
more accurately, that the fight for it, for control), but
it is the case. It is not that there are “great men” but
that there are “great moments” wch propose themselves to
us as the body of work by a number of individuals. In 100
years, that list will look like the Norton Anthology (tho
some are there, such as Kahn & Wilk & Faville & Lally,
because of their role as first readers & as pts of connec-
tion). Don’t omit a one.

Your work has been in this house just 150 minutes. I don’t
normally write such letters, but then I don’t normally get
 The Language Letters 223

such manuscripts. I’d be interested in knowing a great

deal more about what lies behind this book & that sta-
tionary & that impeccible (sp??) handwriting. E.g., age,
where’d you go to school, what other works are available,
how do you know Iven (himself a key bricoleur of our time,
on the order of David McAleavey, who along w/ Watten &
Rothenberg are almost responsible for the construction of
this list in the 60s & 70s), do you read any of those peo-
ple listed & do you understand your relation to them (&
theirs to you)? What do you read? Do you know the work of,
say, Jacques Lacan or Jacques Derrida (whose deconstruc-
tion is what your detection seems aimed at, his Of Gramma-
tology is in paperback in English & his translator was the
teacher of several on that list (no accident there).

Tom Raworth just called to say he read the enclosed essay

in A Hundred Posters49 & liked it, “right & right nice” he
said, wch is the 2nd magical event in my life today. I’m
also enclosing 3 #s of Tottel’s (the most recent 3) + a
selection (a conservative one) of my own work, all as a
means of broadening the dialog. I think your book relates
directly to the concerns of both the Mac Low and DiPalma
pieces in Tottel’s 16 & wld be curious to see if your own
sense of that corresponds.

let me close this w/ this thot: i take as a maxim the fol-

lowing ideas:

poetry is a relation within a matrix (another term for a

mailing list) visible only within its transformations;

poetry is the opposite of metaphysics (not grammatology),

the opposite of a reflective cogito

that the sensation one has in front of a Necker cube:

49. Ron Silliman, “Private Parts,” A Hundred Posters 8 (August 1976).

224  The Language Letters

is the sensation of the subject & object, always revolv-

ing, never still, & that this feeling is the totality of
language, the totality of consciousness, the totality of
the human (it is the object of inquiry for Freud, Marx,
Saussure). Necker’s “illusion” & Marx’s Capital are propo-
sitions of an identical reality, if only we can detect it.
& that this detection, to use your word, is the task of
our generation.

Hope to “hear” from

you soon,

Ron

————

44. Ron Silliman to Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews

(3/28/77)

To live by the sea

in a season of drought,
the brown spring surrounded
by the green of deep water...

Dutifully, if reluctantly, each Monday now is the figure

of the proposition: get-a-job. Wch means that I’ve stepped
up my pace to the point that it is a “regular” activity.
Soon enough, it will be a constant one. . . .

Letters. Letters are just impossible. I long for the day

 The Language Letters 225

when we have computer terminals in every home (w/ either

printout mechanism or terminal screen). Whenever I had an
idea, I’d just send it. Ray is the only person I know who
uses the mail like that on a regular basis. I wish I did.

Legend . . . I want to kick butts (yrs in partic.,

Charles) over the entropy factor in this. A key to the
whole is the ability to respond quickly. When this first
started, Bruce made a comment to the effect of “let’s go
slowly & shoot for Easter as a target date” . . . well,
that’s only 2 wks away. It’s been 2 months since I got
anything from anyone in the mail constituting an addition
on this # (not even in fact any comment on my last mail-
out, wch was a proposal for a tryad w/ the 2 of you -- did
it get lost?). I vented similar steam to Steve last wk
when I sent him the start of a tryad for me-him-Charles,
the form of wch is a series of Questions & Answers (thus I
sent a thing which read, literally):

Q: Where are we going?

A:

w/ the idea that Steve wld answer, ask next question

(of Charles) & then send it on. I told Steve that it
was my desire to have the triad make a complete circuit
(i.e., Charles back to me) w/in a week’s time (so that
20 wks, nearly 5 months, wld add up to only 60 questions
& answers). I have not as yet gotten it back from Charles
& I wonder if he’s gotten it from Steve. On top of wch, I
have a heavy frustration on my dyad w/ C., wch has been
involving the letter itself as a form, the phallic as a
topic &, on my side of it, the idea of a journey as a key
to discovering the new(s). After I last sent C. a section
-- over a month ago -- another journey came along wch fit
perfectly into context of what I was trying to do (wch pt
I mentiond on the Long phone call). But as I haven’t yet
226  The Language Letters

gotten the response from Charles, I’ve nothing to respond

to & so, now, that event is “stale” & not to the pt. wch
means an alteration of the final piece in some unfore-
seeable way (wch for me, at least, is a regrettable one).
This bodes ill for any mag venture, for a # of reasons,
the most important one being: this is functionally a
“trial run” of the communication system necessary to put-
ting such a thing together &, as such, this does not sug-
gest much optimism for any project. Also, I wonder to what
extent it (the idea of a mag) is “getting in the way of”
the poem/collab??

All this as prologue to youse guys,

Dear Bruce, Dear Charles,

I want to go into some general thinking of my own about

the idea of a mag, before getting into the specifics of
the 2 long letters wch you sent.

1. Continuing nagging feeling abt the questions of cost,

coordination & labor involvd in putting a mag together.
When I was in the prison movement, I once was askd (I’ve
mentioned this before, probably to the both of you) to
head up a lobbying effort to halt the construction of 2
new state prisons, wch I agreed to, partly because Fay
Stender, a lawyer for whom I have (or had) tremendous
respect, had been doing it thus far & askd me personally.
When I took over, I was startled to find (1) that the
project as such was in organizational chaos, no funds, no
records, no list of names, numbers, addresses necessary,
etc. (2) that the project had drawn up a list of fund-
ing requirements totaling (this was considered minimal)
$14 grand to (this was considered maximal) $25 grand, for
a period of one year. Since I was “on loan” from CPHJ,
wch continued to pay my salary, I was able to restruc-
ture the project thusly: I got the Prisoners Union (the
 The Language Letters 227

other large movement group in the state) to “lend” me

the services of one of their employees, much as CPHJ had
“lent” me, “for the duration.” The person I chose was a
former school teacher, then getting ready to attend law
school. She & I then proceeded to redraft the proposed
budget downward to $300 -- the cost of preparing informa-
tion packets & posters -- wch we easily raised from Levi-
Strauss’s Foundation. We spent a few days in Sacramento &
came up with (1) a much better description of the prison
system’s plan than had previously been available, (2) a
list of state officials whom we had to “reach” if we were
to stop the prisons. Of the one hundred twenty state leg-
islators, we were able to pinpoint six whom we felt meant
the difference between success and failure, due princi-
pally to committee assignments, outstanding political
debts (not financial), etc. (3) a list, still smaller, of
budget officials in the executive branch whom we had to
either get onto our side, or else neutralize. We then got
together a small speaker’s bureau (a lawyer, a psychia-
trist, an author, an ex-prisoner) wch we got to go into
the districts of the key legislators. At this point, we
wanted to get press coverage in the key districts, plus
official support from groups like the local archdiocese,
the democratic clubs, etc. If there was to be a “natu-
ral ally” for us among the key legislators, this would
flush him or her out. Wch it in fact did, giving us the
advantage now of having access to the legislative process
from the inside. We then put together a profile of con-
cerns for each legislator, based on information we got
in Sac’to & from this legislator (Willie Brown, the black
who made the “give me back my delegation” speech for the
McGovern forces at the ’72 democratic convention), & went
& talked to them, using our understanding of their con-
cerns as the focal pt for why we thought they shld vote
to drop the project. These discussions left us w/ a clear
knowledge as to where & when the project wld face its
most critical test: specifically, we now knew where &
when a vote wld have to be taken wch we cld win. There
was a specific committee vote coming up & we knew how all
228  The Language Letters

but two votes wld go: a conservative woman democrat from

a rural district & a republican moderate from LA. If we
cld get just one of them to vote our way, we wld stop the
proposal. So: the wk before the vote we got a publishing
company to donate 120 copies of the book Maximum Security
(by Eve Pell, who was the author on our speakers bureau)
to each member of the legislature (1) in the hopes of
giving added credence to our descriptions of why these
places ought not to be built (2) to give us an additional
tool, if needed, to indicate to the legislature that the
proposal was a dubious one (it is almost impossible to
kill bills on a floor vote in California, but we wanted
to be ready to try, if we had to). As it turnd out, our
republican actually read & liked the book & when the com-
mittee hearing on the proposal came up, it became a forum
for discussing the ideas in the book. What happened was
the director of corrections profanely described the book
as “what you cld expect from a woman” thereby winning
over, to our side, both the republican & the woman demo-
crat who was quite offended (tho far from a liberation-
ist, she).

Why the long tale? Because I really think the proposal,

if it is taken seriously, entails a quantum of labor not
unlike that described above & because the prison movement,
as I interacted in it, was often guilty, as Fay was, w/
poor planning. Had we tried to operate her way, the pris-
ons wld have been built while we were running around look-
ing for an insane quantity of $. Now, Alcheringa -- let’s
think about it for a second -- had (has still) Paul Kahn
on salary & a university to underwrite the venture (nom-
inally). It wld have folded ages ago w/o these 2. If I
recall correctly, Clayton Eshleman once told me that it
took him $3,000 to put out 2,000 #s of Caterpillar. Now,
2 immediate responses to that problem -- as a problem --
occur to me, both of wch I think are immediately problem-
atic: (1) we aren’t doing Caterpillar in terms of size (2)
we aren’t doing Caterpillar (&/or Alcheringa), in terms
of distribution. Wch takes me back to the old question of
 The Language Letters 229

What, then, are we doing? 200 copies of 40 pp. is sim-

ply Tottel’s 16 (& an investment of some $250-$300). To
expand either of those figures, copies or pages, is going
to expand cost dramatically. As wld adopting some of the
accoutrements of higher quality printing (better binding,
professional typesetting (“Asylums” drove me batty trying
to find the right typewriter to borrow in order to type
it up). As I do in fact intend to continue Tottel’s (tho
in a format somewhat different from #s 1-15, closer to
16, but w/ changes there too), I see no point, per se, in
simply duplicating it. In particular, I see no real need
for a mag of divers topics wch has only a newsletter size
distribution: it strikes me as a contradiction of form
& function. An article by me on, say, Forti & Van Riper
is going to be of use to those who (1) have an interest
in dance, (2) have an interest in whatever I write (this
latter category being, in reality, much smaller than the
former, tho on the Tottel’s mailing list that wld prob-
ably be reversed for obvious reasons). Depending on my
personal finances, I see Tottel’s continuing as something
of an annual 80 page mag, featuring 5-10 poets per #, w/
larger sections of their work. So the mag, as proposed,
seems to me to have 2 necessary requirements: larger
distribution (1,000 minimum) & a varied content, beyond
poetry.

Now (am using that word as a conjunction today), a com-

mitment to 1,000 copies & varied content has immediate
implications:
1) it wld have to be distributed in such a way as
to reach all the possible audiences (e.g., the
dance world)
2) production techniques wld have to be of a high
enough standard to insure that those potential
audiences wld read (a) the mag in general, (b)
articles not directly pertinent to their concerns
(this pt being for me a key reason to have varied,
broader content focus than just poems)
these all have cost implications.
230  The Language Letters

Furthermore, the cost implications multiply when one con-

siders that while we may be able to float a first # out of
our pockets (this is a highly abstract ideal to me at the
moment) & thru some benefits, we will use up those poten-
tial resources almost at once. If a magazine is going to
develop readership (that is, create its own market), it
has to have some predictability, wch means getting not one
issue out, now, catch as catch can, but having, before we
go to press w/ #1, some real sense of where the $ is for #s
2 & 3, and very possibly having it on hand. Of the 3 of us,
I think that I may be the only one who has had extensive (&
I’m not thinking of Tottel’s or of the various features in
Chi Rev, Alcherina, or Margins) editorial experience, put-
ting out a newspaper as such. I concede the point that we
have what I take to be a critically useful point of view,
but this project demands a lot more than just that. When
we draw up a budget, we shld draw one up for not one issue,
but at least 3, including such variables as income, pre-
dictable inflation, etc. What kind of costs will we be able
to take care of non-financially (e.g., having a friend let
us use a compositor, for example)?

2. Time. I am, as a roommate of mine puts it, a time junky.

Save for movies, jazz concerts, sex & long walks (&, usu-
ally around one in the morning, messing around w/ my gui-
tar), nearly every waking minute is devoted to some chore
or another (including reading & going to readings, both
of wch are an integral part of my work). The problem I am
always articulating abt my correspondence is that I sim-
ply can’t keep up. Similarly, I have an absolute minimum
of 400 unread books in this house. Being unemployed for
the past 6 months has allowed me to get some vitally nec-
essary work done & I worry abt what will happen if/when I
go back to work. Putting together the score for Circadia
(once Tamal) has been a massive undertaking, something I
cld not have done in the evening after a day of work. To
score 200 phrases (out of a total of 6,700 of them) takes
about 2 hours of total concentration. Similarly, it takes
a half day to type out the final form of any single section
 The Language Letters 231

of 2197 (most recent section done, “Invasion of the Stalin­

oids,” was the 9th of 13). It has always been just this
crush of things to do wch has made Tottel’s so irregular,
much moreso than the everpresent problem of funding. So I
think of the magazine project as a potential problem in
this area. If it isn’t going to be done right it won’t be
effective & I see no reason for not doing it right (& if I
sound skeptical or negative, it really is this worry more
than any other wch lies behind it). But to do it right is
to commit oneself to a lot of work (& I don’t think the
idea that one person, Charles, say, being managing editor,
is going to really answer that problem -- it may remove one
level, but only one, that of production).

the question, for me, is Is the project important enough

to me to make the commitment to that work? An honest
answer is that I still don’t know. Partly because my own
future is muddy. If I knew now what I’d be doing for a
living 6 months from now (& what its impact, financially &
on my time, wld be), then I’d have the context to answer,

right now, tho, I’m interested, but hesitant.

(still hesitant, & those two aspects are essential if you

are to understand my position. it may be -- i’ve thot of
this & am not sure -- that you may be better situated to put
a mag out between the 2 of yourselves, at least right now.)

3. clarity of intent. this has always been for me what

has distinguished the best mags. it is what gives This,
Caterpillar, Big Sky (now defunct by the way) their cohe-
siveness. consider for the contrast, Alcheringa & Coyote’s
Journal, 2 mags wch i have thot were doing essential work,
but wch are much less readable, as magazines, because of
the muddiness wch simply comes from that sort of collab-
oration. this worries me, because it’s a big trap we cld
walk headfirst into. now Kulchur & Black Mountain Review
were not/are not thus trapped, nor has been the few best
#s of the Paris Review. so it is not an automatic equation
232  The Language Letters

(if it had been, i’d have said no to the project right

away). how do we combat this muddiness? i suspect (or
rather, i propose) that we have 2 alternatives:
1) make one of the 3 guiding editor for each # on
a rotating basis, w/ the other 2 functioning as
advisory to that # (perhaps w/ some veto power if
they feel the main editor has been too lax or muddy
on a specific pt); this also has the advantage of
giving each editor one project in front of him
at a time, w/ an 18 month deadline (w/ both the
Alcheringa & the Margins symposiums, it took a
solid year just to get the material to the pt of
production).
2) give the mag something of a formulaic structure,
a la the Paris Rev (this is in fact inherent in
the concept of a ReViews section, wch is, i think,
a good idea): w/ the idea that each wld have (for
the purpose here of discussion): a substantial work
of prose, an interview, several poems, a ReView
section, an article on aesthetics (e.g., a review
of Barbara Dilley, or Terry Riley), an article on
the human sciences, all w/ some basic unifying
principle, plus “appropriate” graphics. for
instance: an issue on “body/language” might entail,
as prosework, a play by McClure, an interview
w/ Forti (carried on w/o Peter’s over-verbal
protective screen), McCaffery on the European
sound-poets tradition (Hugo Ball, Schwitters,
Kruchenykh, Cobbing) & phonocentrism, Anthony
Shafton on the origin of articulation out of facial
gesture (as distinct from “cries”), an article on
the Four Horsemen by Owen Sound, Alpert (say) on
Rothenberg’s “Horse Song” translations, a piece
on working w/ Robert Wilson & Phil Glass, another
on the form of the Ketjak, poetry by Melnick,
Hejinian, Child, & an article by Alexander Kahov
on the political persecution of the futurists in
the USSR plus plus plus . . . anyhow, you see, the
possibilities are vast.
 The Language Letters 233

w/in these two alternatives, i’d suggest a combination.

thus each # wld have both the outer-structure vision of
the issues before & following, & the principal vision of
whichever one of us edited that #. wch means a lot of work
for all of us, discounting production, distribution, etc.
about 12 months of editing out of every 18.

4. the question of clarity & the question of art-editing.

this is a specific variation of #3 (supra). w/ a body/
language #, the appropriate art (& i do envision such as
having as much a continuing role as a ReView) might be, on
the one hand choreographic notation by one of the people
in question, or it might be a portfolio of photographs of
dance taken by a specific photographer, or it might be,
say, the laser-derived words (a la Ruscha’s water words)
of Van Riper. it seems odd, if we go the way of focusing
each # on a single editor (or even topic) to separate the
function out, as such. at best it wld be a collaborative
(in this narrow & perjorative sense of that term) effort.
it again gives rise to my question What are we doing, & if
it is just giving space to 4 people to boogie, is that the
way to do it (let me say that i’m noting this here not as
a problem, now, but as a proposition of one we are certain
to come up against, later).

so the question remains for me 3 questions: cost, com-

mitment & focus: if we can answer those, everything else
follows. i think we can succeed, qualitatively, if we
can raise production questions to the level achieved by,
say, Kulchur (wch is modest compared w/ Big Deal), but i
think we need to talk these out more & to plan more in
advance than maybe we’ve been thus far discussing. con-
sider the time factor alone in (1) choosing a focus for an
issue, (2) strategizing out a rough format, (3) asking for
the work, especially if say we’re asking somebody (Fred
Jameson, for instance) to do a piece on socialist realism
(or whatever), (4) editing the work (especially on the two
horns wch inevitably stick any such project: the promisd
material wch isnt done on time & that wch does come in but
234  The Language Letters

is hopelessly bad (have lost a friendship or two over the

latter). there is no way an otherwise busy person can do
such editing in less than 8 months & i’d say 12 is more
reasonable (e.g., the inevitable correspondence & mailings
between editor and art editor until a certain unity is
achieved for each issue).

all that by way of random thots, w/o the specifics in

front of me of yr two letters, no, not random thots, but
hard thots, of what wld be necessary to make the project
fly (wch i hope to come back to after dealing w/ the spe-
cifics, wch i’ve now got in front of me.

(p.s. this is totally off the subject, Charles, but as

you & Ray are reading on April 3rd & as i’m reading here
on the same day, if we all read something from Legend, we
can have it being read more or less simultaneously on both
coasts!)

Bruce, yr letter of 2/26-27 (1) goal (i.e., overambition

problems: yes, i recognize them as potential & agree on
the necessity of poetry (or writing or whatever we call
it). i think, tho, that the use of a formulaic structure,
both gives room for such an approach & yet puts sufficient
reins to keep it from getting too amorphous (what not to
do is to follow Shocks #6, wch was their androgyny issue
& wch had 3 editors w/ a common topic & which ended up
looking like 101 takes on something not well perceived). i
think that by showing in any issue how writing naturally
extends to (pervades) all of these other levels, they can
be brought in. again, i think we can avoid the little
anthology problem of IO (wch you buy if its yr subject,
but otherwise not) w/ the same function of a relatively
standardized format (wch neednt be too rigid if we have
sufficient space, say 100 pp. to deal w. wch is another
problem we’ll have to come to long before issue #1: type-
size, etc., so that we know that 140 pp. of typescript
 The Language Letters 235

will telescope down to 100 pp. of mag on a predictable

basis. i agree that writing/language must stand at the
center, but precisely because i think they naturally do,
they serve as the means (old & new, Saussure/Wittgenstein
or Chomsky/Derrida) of ordering the whole of the “science”
of man (in the general sense).

so, i agree that we dont simply put politics at the cen-

ter, but language & a commitment to the recognition that
all activity does have (often very complex & intricate &,
if you will, invisible to the naked eye) political dimen-
sions & consequences. i think that our collective politics
tend to be similar (at one level) but not identical (that
is, we do not have a line, we are not a pre-party collec-
tive of writers, even tho we may sometimes wish that we
were). i think tho that it is important for each issue to
have a clear sense of its politics & that that is one rea-
son why having one of us, per issue, in charge of content
is a plus. otherwise, long discussions on how Chomsky’s
views are predicated on an anarcho-communist position wch
is in turn a contradiction within a larger social demo-
cratic metaphysics wch finally permeates his structures
of thot cld prevent us from actually getting issues out.
Charles, on the phone, suggested that i look at a mag/­
tabloid called In Our Times, wch was dominated in content
& advisory board by such left leaning Democrats (big D)
as Kinoy, Hayden, etc. argh. what to avoid. just as i wld
not stand behind the stalinist simplifications of Interna-
tional Bulletin (wch is nonetheless a useful newspaper, as
is the Anarchist Open Road out of Vancouver (most recently
the homevoice for the sla [Symbionese Liberation Army]
who do finally reveal themselves as anarchists-before-­
communists, to no surprise at all), tho its format does
interest me. wch brought me back to the idea of Black
Mountain, Kulchur, the best Paris Reviews, etc., places
where a rounded view did get articulated & a format wch
seems to give that permission.

& likewise i agree we must avoid the quota-liberal or

236  The Language Letters

what you call Progressive Labor mystifications of working

class or 3rd World peoples (that term itself is a major
mystification in my book & i wish there was a better term
for the phenomenon, for, as Michael sd in a letter to me
quite rightly, the Irish are the first 3rd World peo-
ples (o sure, that’s an overstatement, the citizens of
Mohenjo-daro probably are that, but you see the point)):
its function as a term is to separate out common (class)
bonds. i dont want to think in those terms, tho the idea
of issue wch did focus on, say, Simon Ortiz, cld as well
include such materials as David Guss’ translations from
the Makiritare, Hine from his Mexican materials, etc.,
etc., an article by or on Jim Pepper, the jazz flautist
(who, like Ortiz, is a member of the Pueblo people), a
piece on Simon by MacAdams, etc. so i dont think we need
to be paternalistic abt such projects, as i do think there
is work there wch does in fact stand up.

a night’s sleep, 3 cups of coffee, a call to Ray abt that

reading Sunday, then typed everything above after Simon’s
first mention, which was where i broke off last night.

ideas clearer this morning, this letter (wch i thot before

breakfast perhaps not to send, as too messy or argumenta-
tive, but wch in fact is the mulch of thot, wch ya shld
see & chew around on yrselfs -- i see ourselves struggling
towards a form in these letters, but (more amazing!) i
actually see One emerging!

back to the question of editors. i think, as sd above,

that to give one person the responsibility to put a #
together, w/ advice from the other 2, and to give the
other two a veto over missteppings, seems to me both the
 The Language Letters 237

best collective/indiv. balance we cld have, wld allow for

the personal vision & collective responsibility.

size & format, again i’m drawn to projcts wch are in fact
shorter than 8½x11 (e.g. Paris Rev, Chelsea, Kulchur)
most of wch are 8½x5½ (this has obvious advantages for
bkstores, also will allow us to print 100 pp. issues on 25
sheets of paper, rather than 50 & gives us a substantial
look.

frequency: 2 a year & always scheduled 3 in advance (pos-

sibly w/ a commitment, if any of us shld die or drop out,
to keep the collective at that # & to continue the mag as
social fact, a la Hudson or something, that it go beyond
the personal.

funding & distrib. we need to go more into this area, but

not right now.

title: of those we’ve been tossing around, further com-

ment (w/ a sense that we have no pressure to make a com-
mitment now, i watchd Mother Jones go from Dimensions to
New Dimensions to Gazette to Mother Jones in a 2 yr period
before the first issue).

Present Tense is, it turns out, the name of publication to

wch M. L. Rosenthal (as distinct from Bob) is poetry edi-
tor, scratch that!

Future Tense i like, but worry abt its utopian connota-

tions.
238  The Language Letters

Letters still bores me unless we can deconstruct its aris-

tocratic origins (perhaps have a cover wch is a grid of
type w/ the title in different color or face a la:

abLcedfghi
jklEmnopqr
stuvTwxyza
bcdefTghij
klmnopEqrs
tuvwxyzRab
cdefghijSk

something on that order.

ContraDictions(s), as distinct from contradiction i like

esp. if distributed on the cover as

C
o
n
t
r
a d i c t i o n (s)

actually the a shd be over the d i guess, but you know vot
i mean.

Front like Letters still seems not sharp enuf to my ear.

What i like.

features: as you can see, my sense of the mag (highly

dependent on it having a clear structure) is such now that
the idea of feature wld be highly dependent on each of our
interests. i mean, think of it this way: if you were given
#1 of the Paris Rev, w/ its readership, format, etc.,
every 18 months, or rather just once in every 18 months,
 The Language Letters 239

what wld be of the utmost importance for you to publish. i

think that this wld tend to build the features more organ-
ically. for me, i think i wld center a #, if i had one to
put together today, around an interview w/ Fred Jameson &
a series of articles & pieces about the Sign, as such, w/
a section from CCs [Clark Coolidge’s] 1,000 page poem as
the long work up front (i think it makes no sense to pub-
lish from that poem save section by section) plus work by
Grenier, a good crit. review of Roland Barthes, Lacan &
Derrida by ? (me, maybe). i think we all have so many good
ideas (yr list makes me drool, Bruce!).

reVIEWS: yr orig. description of same (short excerpts w/o

comment from either new or “lost” bks) is a great idea,
but we shld keep it distinct from review work as such.

lost work: i have a photocopy somewhere of a set of let-

ters (one each) between Paul Carroll & Charles Olson,
otherwise lost (it is back in a box somewhere in Pennsyl-
vania if it still exists at all) wch wld be fun to print,
esp. as a first #, as in it CO wonders what one does after
a magazine (Paul is at that point leaving Chi Rev & Big
Table scene) plus lists a few poems he sent them (wch were
never used) including one wch has since been lost, “Rufus
Gonfalon.”50

50. This is likely a reference to poems that were eventually completed as “Rufus Wood-
pecker. . .” and “The Gonfalon Raised Tonight,” which were held back from The Distances
(see Charles Olson, Collected Poems [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987], xxix).
Silliman recalls that “Iven Lourie had sent me a bad photocopy from Chi Rev office of a text
that had this as its title, but Olson was wont to issue work in various stages and it could
easily have morphed into those. Never did find that photocopy, which being thermal xerox
would now be pure whiteness—lost opportunity there.”
240  The Language Letters

now i am responding to Charles’ letter (actually mail just

came w/ $125 for some freelancery, an offer of $50 from U
of Texas to participate in a survey of “criminal justice
leaders,” a big book on child abuse intervention, another
on juvenile alternatives to incarceration, a letter from
my mother, a book (mEYEnd), Akwesasne Notes & a letter
from a female ex-con down in San Diego) but before i do,
one more thought on titles, i’ve been thinking very much
of neologisms, partly because of a steadily growing sense
of the importance of the problematics of letters in the
most literal sense of the word & the idea that words in
fact dont exist (in this sense Saussure, Derrida & Bateson
dovetail) & that it is a metaphysical game we play to
think that they do. Bateson’s argument that there are no
“states” in nature, only “events” seems equivalent to Der-
rida’s distinction that writing (i.e., the structure wch
imposes statehood into our Cs & wch is larger than lan-
guage as such) is the originary form of language & only w/
in writing wld we imagine a linguistics, so have been toy-
ing w/ this word much of late

NOWN

wch is of course Now, Known, and Noun (&, not coinciden-

tally, Own).

i think what i was typing above abt the 1:3 editoral mix
fits in w/ yr sense of consensus pretty closely, esp.
where you go into the Violi/Owen discussion (i’d print
neither, but might well print Ortiz, wch makes Bruce
antsy, as i wld be by Lurie or Amirkhanian or even Chomsky
(who is as i see it the enemy, tho in another sense obvi-
ously not). & if my “change the culture” ambition sounds
large (well, it is large, but any good mag, & quite a
few bad ones, do that) i agree that we have to have a
sense that we are not simply The Center (here is where
Bruce’s uneasiness w/ say 3rd World materials is to me
 The Language Letters 241

too ethnocentric -- i’d have no problem w/ materials by

Lorenzo Thomas, Piedro Petri, any # of such people (or
such Britishers as Raworth or Allen Fischer [Fisher], who
is a fine writer even if i misspelt his name). likewise,
i’d love to get on the page some of the great raps wch
occur in the black community on streetcorners, wch are in
fact poems in a specific oral tradition, but wch seldom
get to the page. i agree w/ you & w/ Bruce that the ques-
tion here, in such areas is What & How, & here of course
is where the idea of each issue singly structured (yet
around a visible format) wld allow such things to occur,
but w/o the problem of lowering standards (wch are ethno-
centric ones, the page, as such, is a white boozhy stan-
dard & has no special sanction, tho the proposition of a
mag is, in fact, the proposition of the page -- we have to
keep these problematics in mind!).

but let me also use yr distinction of Technicians here, to

show that it, as the figure of 1 in 3 is a much clearer bk,
as act, than is America a Prophecy (wch for me is theoreti-
cally the most important of Jerry’s anthologies, tho a less
good book), because AaP has that muddiness inserted via the
presence of Quasha (not to get on George’s case as such, i
like him & his work wch is little understood in this country
because it is so singularly his own), just the other pres-
ence does it & i want issues as clear as Technicians is.

yr comments on Susan’s ideas are great (as, in fact, are

the ideas). if i’ve used Paris Rev as a model for the dis-
cussion here, it has 2 purposes (1) its formulaic struc-
ture makes it appear a better mag than it actually is, (2)
visually it has been the best lit mag of the past 20 yrs
on a regular basis. Big Sky is the only other literary mag
to have a similar commitment to the mag as visual object.
this whole area needs more discussion.

advisory bd. i think it shld be active, not large, very

242  The Language Letters

selective. but i think we shld wait on this until other

issues are settled.

yr comment on format shld be referred back to my comment

on Bruce’s comment on format: i think 8½x5½, perhaps false
perfect bound & DEFINITELY w/ title (whatever it is) on
the binding: also w/ a good clear typeface, not the mess
IO is.

i like yr title idea of Absense. maybe like it even better

as

A
b Sense

or

AbSense.

so. am at wit’s end (you’ve noticed havent you) as well as

at that of the 2 letters. let me tie this all together w/ a
proposition, to wch (rather than the above, wch is as i said
mulch & cud) you & Bruce & Charles can respond formally:

1. 2 issues per year

100 pages 8½x5½
1,000 copies (we need to budget this, that is
get estimates)

2. 1 person in charge of developing each issue, in rotation

w/ the other 2 as advisory & retaining veto-power of some
sort
 The Language Letters 243

3. a modestly fixed form, to include:

1 substantial work (long poem or series, a prosepiece,
play, etc.)
an interview (Jameson, Eigner, Wilson, Zukofsky)
considerable poetry
reViews
an article on the arts
an article on the human sciences

4. writing as our center & a commitment to the idea that all

activity has a political dimension

5. a commitment to a budget process wch will be 3 issues

ahead of wherever we are at any pt.

6. discussion as to advertising, benefactors & grants

7. further discussion of titles:

Future Tense
ContraDiction(s)
Absence
Nown
+ whatever else we think of

i think, right now, that if we put together a consensus on

#s 1-5 on this list w/in the next 3 months, say, then we
can begin to “go public” & make plans.

but i’m opposed to our working on the mag project before

Legend is done, because it will get incredibly in the way
(i fear). rather than biting off more than we can chew,
let us bite one thing at a time, chew well & give it time
to digest.

okay, i have to go get a hair cut. i love the both of you,

Ron
244  The Language Letters

————

45. Charles Bernstein to Ron Silliman (5/19/77)

Ron,

was genuinely thrilled to get the copy of 2197 in the mail

yesterday afternoon & although i’ve not gotton past a fast
overall look & then the first few sections it looks won-
derful -- the syntax turning in on itself so that the sen-
tences are not impossible physical entities or events as
in Ketjak but syntactically swampy (not like “many head
out of here” but rather “many an head out of here”) but
the time’s not yet to talk abt it. will of course get it
to ray & bruce.

guess there are a variety of misc things to relate to

you. for one, james sherry called to tell me how much he
liked the “Stalinoids” section & that he wanted to print
it together with a number of other wrks by the Legend crew
-- individual & collaborative -- in Roof #3. he will be
printing a long poem of mine (“For----”) in the next issue,
along with some of bruce’s wrk, plus a variety of middling
to bad St. Mark’s people, wch shld be interesting since
you’ll get a chance to see what a number of Berrigan influ-
enced people are doing (really not doing). anyway sherry
(who, as you once sd to me of jim mccurry, doesnt really
know what we’re doing) wants to make a substantial (he
says) commitment to our wrk in the next issue & i wanted
you to know that & what bruce, ray & i were planning to
send him. (i told him he shld contact steve, &c., but he
says until he sees steve’s solo wrk he doesnt want to print
any collaborations involving him. the key thing here is
that he wants this stuff by very early June.) ray & i are
going to give him a chance to publish our dyad & bruce sug-
gests we also give him the Ron-Bruce-Charles triad if it’s
done in time. i am still sitting on that, but bruce says
he’ll give it his immediate attention when i’m through &
send a copy off to you & sherry at the same time, if you
 The Language Letters 245

agree -- this way you can still okay the final version.
he’ll be in touch with you on it. my own initial impression
was that we cldnt really have the triad in time, but it cld
work out & wld be gd to see in the context of other of our
wrks. obviously you shld let bruce or me know yr thinking
on this. -- on that triad -- as i think i sd -- i really
like the way it’s going -- a beautiful piece -- & yr note
on it was nothing less than excellent. i think i will send
you a xerox of the penned in additions i will be sending
on to bruce, who will add his own & re-type it (tho, come
to think of it here -- strange i feel like this letter is
a kind of telephone call & think of yr idea of a teletype
console in each [of] our homes & we cld immediately type a
reply -- actually what a great idea for a collaboration to
get access to such a machine & have a conversation with it
-- as i was saying, i think bruce should also pen in his
corrections & send the ms. to you & me for an okay & then
go ahead & type it. incidently, i do want to say that i did
think that you shld have gone ahead & worked on the triad
more & was surprised that bruce wanted to stop at his round
-- it was my sense that yr input had been too limited up
till that time & am glad you continued to wrk on the piece
& in that sense def second yr thoughts on having all pieces
receive a number of go rounds --

anticipating wrtng you today i looked for yr last letter

& cldnt find it so i hope i’m not forgetting anything you
asked &c. i do remember carrying the letter arnd for a
numer [number] of days cause i liked rdng it so much -- it
was a wonderful letter -- really!

the weeks since then have been very busy [. . .]. i really
enjoyed visiting with rae, a completely unexpected plea-
sure, who brought all you SF figures to life for us & cer-
tainly increased my desire to go out there on a visit.
chuck also struck me as being very nice (people alwys
attack for using the word nice as it its less than enthu-
siastic, while for me the word is very enthusiastic --
i.e., high praise). [. . . .]
246  The Language Letters

another loose end is the magazine, wch seems to be mov-

ing into a kind of limbo. i think yr arguments in yr last
letter on that were very persuasive -- but if we are to
do a mag that’s that expensive -- thinking of cost alone
-- well it’s just hard to realistically know if we can at
this moment make the fincial [financial] & time commit-
ment necessary. one idea i have as a stop gap thing maybe
for a year or something is to form a collective publish-
ing or distributing grp that would make available a vari-
ety of materials published either separately by one of the
three of us, or by others in special circumstances, or by
the distributing service itself, i.e., we cld make avail-
able Marquee, Parsing, Vowells, back issues of Tottel’s
(at cost +), steve’s bks, plus poss even ms. versions of
things at cost + (i.e., Sunset Debris for $6 in ms. ver-
sion “made available through Rhizome”). add to this pot
a bi-monthly newsletter -- subscription only -- wch wld
be something like the reViews section plus some longer
critical sections -- sort of an extension of our corre-
spondences in part & an informal place for the exchange
of ideas, letters to the editor, &c. all this misc cld be
distributed by us & by, say, the NYS distribution service.
also short pamphlets & things cld be put out. this is not
a substitue [substitute] for the magazine, but it may be a
start. &, since you’ll still be doing Tottel’s, say, per-
haps a bit of help with distribution of it -- autonomously
produced by you but released by Rhizome (or whatever name
-- we shld decide on a mag name & use it for this). what
you say????

THANKS for yr Joyce paper -- by the way. i enjoyed rdng

it -- it was actually a gd introductory piece & if not
as complex as yr later stuff, still a solid piece. WAKE
alwys loomed in my mind, but recently something you’ve sd
has been a gd focus -- that it’s a cul de sac because its
obsession is with etymology not the structure of language.
-- also this thing abt choice in 2197 is playing in my
mind right now -- we are not free to choose our language,
being born into it, & the romantic act of renunciation
 The Language Letters 247

(whether Rimbaud or Duchamp or Surrealism) is simply a

refusal to acknowledge this (the) condition of our human
lives, a refusal of (to use two words you have sd recently
are names for it) love & revolution -- & also a refusal
of the choice that is possible -- a choice always within
a set of conditions. i have, by the way, decided to write
a final section to our dyad, starting out with the sense
that person is the first division, that the language of
us all, the Legend we are writing, is the re-placement of
ourselves [ourself] with ourselves -- renouncing our iso-
lation, as a friend likes to say, w/o losing our solitude
-- wch is perhaps also the figure of metonymy. -- anyway
this is enuf for now. i’m enclosing “The Taste Is What
Counts,” wch i wrote abt a yr ago & have an extra copy of
here as part of my CAPS application. write soon -- i know
you will, love,

Charles

————

46. Charles Bernstein to Steve McCaffery, (“early June

’77”)

Steve,

well here goes part 2, tho i’m not quite sure how to
begin. where. liked ’Ow’s “waif” very much, thought the
essay on Mac Low was the best i’d read on him in a gen-
eral way. actually had a longish phone call with Jackson
last night -- hes a mighty fine person to chat with. i
let slip something abt “progressive” writing or else & he
pointed out he didnt believe in progress, didnt like the
term avant-garde, what impressed him abt poetry was never
that it dealt with certain formal “cutting edge” concerns
but the inner integrity of the wrk regardless of the mode
-- that he thought what characterized “our” wrk (say wrk
that owes something to Mac Low or that has the concerns of
Coolidge or any of the other people in the collaboration,
248  The Language Letters

looks back to Schwitters, is involved specifically with

using collage as a basic compositional technique) was not
that it was more advanced but that it was located on a
topographic schema closer to the visual arts. wch has been
of some concern to me -- i.e., how to deal with elitism &
the avoidance of the para-military self conception often
involved in avant gardism (as if poetry was wrking twrd
some “advance” outside of faithfulness to itself, outside
of the necessity of lagnuague [language] having the most
meaning any of us can give to it. yet, must be sd, i dont
find “straight” poetry very interesting to read & basi-
cally have not read whole realms of wrk & do experience
a sense that in some kinds, some modes, right now there
is something happening that doesnt seem like just another
mode but the most ---- (what to call it?). anyway, what
i liked about yr article on Mac Low was that it brought
out the architectural considerations now active in wrtng
poetry -- so that rather than dwell on the implications of
random process & formula derived works you rather focused
in on how various ways of organizing language can give an
extra charge of meaning creating strong poems. at the beg
of our correspondence we were getting a little bit into
what might be a philosophical difference betw us -- in
respect to my critique of structuralism, conceptual art,
deduced process art, &c. -- but the more i see of yr wrk
& thought the less i see this difference making that much
of a difference. because its obviously true that as ele-
ments in the composition any method goes -- as long as you
mean it -- that its a work that makes sense -- all the
way through. i absolutely loved the wrks you sent to Roof
-- what wonderful wrk -- i cant really comment here, tho,
because i dont have the texts. i’m in a somewhat skepti-
cal mood today i guess on a couple of things -- another
being what the realation [relation] between theoretical
positions abt wrtng (realation is kind of a nice typo dont
you think?) & the praxis is -- i mean you cld have the
correct line, so to say, & be a pretty crummy writer, &,
whats really multievident, have some “mistaken” theoreti-
cal notions & be great. maybe the criteria of quality is
 The Language Letters 249

ultimately more along the “make it new” line -- with my

own twist that i like to give to that perception (essen-
tially i take it the insistence [is] that everything in
the work has to be necessary, no dross, no pro forma
unthought rhetoric) that if you push anything far enough,
get imbedded enuf in the vocabulary & syntax operation
&&&, its bound to be a strong work, wch can reduce to the
old visionary argument, i suppose. . . .

one thing that Sadhu and Ow’s made me rethink was my use
of prior texts (vocabs) in my own wrk -- wch has been
pretty extensive. when you say Mac Low’s “wrtng becomes
a written record of observation” it seemed to me that
this descriptive tact was really the right way to talk
abt whats going on -- really it explains a certain kind
of regard to wrtng that both you & i have in common & is
far more crucial a way of talking than talking abt “ran-
domness” or “image” &c. a friend recently sd that one of
the strogest [strongest] characteristics of my wrtng was a
sesne [sense] of witness, by wch he meant specifically the
distancing from experience that runs thru Parsing -- look-
ing at yr life go by while at the same time being in it is
the way ive expressed it at times -- wch actually is the
attitude twrd language itself, the thing thru wch we expe-
rience, see things as one thing or another, as meanings
-- wch, in wrtng, we want to look at, regard, i.e., making
poetry that kind of wrtng wch is involved with witness-
ing language, so therefore a language reflexive process,
a meaning relective [reflective] process, & a self-relec-
tive [reflective] process. take a step back, Spicer says,
& look at the sentence.51 exactly. some misdirected sole
[soul] seemed offended by Ray’s monad on the accnt that
he thought all those great language specimens, so beauti-
fully weaved together, were meant as artless assertions or

51. See “Love Poems” 6: “It is not for the ears. Hearing / merely prevents progress. Take
a step back and view the sentence” in My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of
Jack Spicer, ed. Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press,
2008), 384.
250  The Language Letters

macho irritableness, i.e., he didnt know now to read the

wrk. “The record of observation” is not of the “world” at
least in the sense of the naive concept of the physcial
[physical] world (forgive this terrible typing), tho maybe
the wrld in the Tractatus sense (“the world is everything
that is the case”) but an observing, a looking out onto,
language. i rembmer [remember] in writing Asylum (cf. Tot-
tel’s 16) & the first section of Parsing being very aware
of the sense that what i was doing was almost a sociology/
anthropology, mapping out realms of language (wch in the
“Signs of the Particularities” became a kind of collect-
ing function) wch is similar to remarks you make in yr
afterword. though recently ive become more interested in
making the vocab my own letters or ntbks &&& for a com-
bination of reasons but mostly because its the material
right now i find most compelling to work with. the issue,
as it is alive for me, is very much whether yr gonna see
wrtng as a subject or an object -- when Mayer wld say, &
her wrds still ring in my ears, you gotta tap the wrtng
-- it destroys wrtng to think of it as an object, as plas-
tic (cf. Jackson’s remarks abt us being closer to the
visual arts -- because we see words as stuff?? to be cut
out and rearranged) while at the same time, for me any-
way, i have little interest in what i just write down, as
such -- but latley [lately] the pt has been to synthesize
the two things -- wch is just what i think Hannah Weiner
is doing in a way i hope to write abt this summer. i.e.,
to think that by being interested essentially in witness-
ing the language you somehow are not living it out, some-
how thinking its an either/or is just that classic oft
repeated self-crippling dualism -- IN AND BESIDE i want to
scream. Watten has recently tried to explain his uncer-
tainty abt my wrk on the account that i dont clearly enuf
separate structure from the decisons [decisions] made
within the structure. he wld prefer to see a poetry where
you can apprehend a consistent “structural myth” (pro-
grammatic strategy) & thus read in to the various choices
made within the matrix that has been agreed upon. in other
wrds -- & he uses Silliman’s matrix theory to put his view
 The Language Letters 251

fwrd -- he says that if you get value (meaning) relative

only to a given matrix then you cant (or shldnt) call into
question the matrix itself -- youve got to make yr moves
within the matrix & let that stand as the border. i had
argued (my wrk has argued really) that its also possi-
ble to turn the matrix in on itself -- to allow somehow
the language to obtrude/intrude into the matrix itself.
i get the sense that what he argues for is really a kind
of relativism that bothers me, its too simple-minded in
the wrong way -- but i feel a little confused abt con-
cretely what it all means. obviously Ron’s wrk is the best
show we have of clearly delineating the structure & keep-
ing it consistently distinct from the “content,” i.e.,
what you do within the structure. on the other hand, our
dyad in its “inter-textual” way is involved with one dis-
course emerging from & plunging back into another (Barry
specifically calls to attention yr sense of intertextual-
ity as something he questions & this piece in particular
bothered him) -- wch is exactly whats interesting me most
these days -- a play between matrixes -- the “deconstruc-
tion” of “structural myths” as the language turns in on
itself -- anyway -- whats yr sense of this -- what do you
think it actually means in terms of particular wrk? what
seems exciting abt our dyad, to me, is that it doesnt
seimply [simply] use “cut-up” language & non-english wrds
-- neologisms? -- to create a unified field of mean-
ing on one plane but actually calls into play notions of
variant simultaneously existing realms of discourse con-
stantly criss-crossing, interacting, creating new gells,
new forms -- very much the description that Wittgenstein
uses to describe language -- as a city with some streets
straight & narrow, some windy old streets, &&&. thinking
abt this it becomes clearer how collage as a basic tech-
nique is a fundamental explanation for where this inter-
textuality comes from. for if you can juxtapose variant
phrases together (often with an eye for an evenness of
surface texture) why not juxtapose kinds of discourse --
is that what you mean by “intertextual”? a kind of wrk ive
seen popping up lately -- Ron’s “Language of Bees” (??) is
252  The Language Letters

one example, my own “Lapidary Entropy” is another, as is

really “Azoot d’Puund,” wch is the original text from wch
our dyad comes (wch i am beginning to feel shld be part of
Legend, part of the whole text of our two way collboration
[collaboration], tho perhaps placed a # of units earlier
in the sequence) -- anyway, the kind of wrk i mean is one
whose meaning lies in its relation to other -- identifi-
able, standardized, genre -- modes of discourse -- so that
the wrk becomes a kind of edifying discourse, is a wrd ive
used before, the units -- sentences -- of it not meant
for their descriptive content nor even for the infrar-
eferential hum as sound & juxtaposition (i.e., the lan-
guaged center [language-centered] poem) but as a comment
on other discourse modes -- so a kind of Brechtian wrtng
(it flashes that the Brechtian “alieniatin [alienation]
effect” is to the pt, but then how to avoid the pitfalls
of theatricalizing language???)

DR SADHU’S seems to be more involved at the experimen-

talal [experimental] level -- an investigation (people
used to use the term investigative wrtng i remember, tho
that always seemed to be Dashiell Hammett) into the mak-
ing of meaning. sometimes the vocabs just dont seem strong
enuf to make completely great poems, e.g. in “Between Two
Worlds,” tho the permutations & selecting out twrd the
end of the poem do have some power. on the other hand the
thickness of meaning in “Bhagavad Gita 13” is very strong
(i dont like using weak/strong images, but i seem to be
anyway). (occurs to me that my dyad with Bruce is much
to the pt of my recent thinking with prior texts -- see
even a cut up from Shakespeare -- “what freezings have
i felt”+++.) anyway, the bk as a whole was out & in for
me, wch is what i mean by experimental. it boils down,
for me, to a question of necessity. Sadhu seems invlvoled
[involved] with opening up the door to rdng in a different
way, but the simply [simple] display of alternative forms
of making meaning is alone not enuf -- a cataloguing of
possibilities of generating meaning thru arrangement of
words & phrases -- tho often the necessity of the specific
 The Language Letters 253

arrangement -- the poem -- does not seem compelling. part

of this is simply my relative lack of connection to “the
language of the langorous” as Ron puts it in 2197 -- wch i
think of in terms of Cage/Mac Low “openness” of the field.
wrk that really attracts me (but you can see the argu-
ment gets circular since its assumed already in wrds like
“attract me” “powerful” “actualized” “presence”) has an
impermeability that this open field is really counter to
-- whaile [while] this stuff is an opening up that gives
the mind plenty of room to move arnd, associate, pass over
-- what i mean by impermeable wrtng you cant get thru, its
opaque, charged with an electric density. now, i under-
stand that part of the aesthetic of what i’m weirdly call-
ing the open field is, as you say, “w/o the intrusion of
my own conscious” but that way of wrtng does seem problem-
atical to me, even given what i see above abt my own simi-
lar experience, because in the end its the intentionality
of wanting a particular sequence or arrangement to wrds
to stand as a poem out of [a] sense of its necessity, its
internal integrity -- i cld use a million dummy buzz wrds
-- sure one wants to concentrate on the form & this tech-
nique does let that surface but to say yr “not resp for
the lexical content” doesnt sit so easy with me, since the
best of these wrks wrk because youve chosen an interest-
ing lexicon, i.e., with the BGita poem. & manipulated the
lexicon not just in any way but in a way that makes sense,
wrks, &&&. in every single one of these poems the [there]
are many stanzas, sections, whatever, that i like very
much, alongside things i liked less well, wch is another
way of saying “experimental.” all the anamorphoses poems
i liked very much -- they seemed consistently alive &
wrkng. “Redwood” was in & out for me (but by that i mean
i liked parts substantially, please dont misunderstand
that). as ive done in my own little example, i cld relate
easily to Shakespearicology -- esp. liked Love’s Labor,
Merchant. . . .

the afterword to OWS with its reference to Mac Lowian

techniques, again brought the problematics of control,
254  The Language Letters

intention, meaning it at every moment so that the poem is

chosen at every second. “Nr total suspension of form from
content”??? content in from [form], maybe. still these
theoretical quibbles seem beside the pt since i see you
suing [using] the afterword to shew forth the ways poems
are built -- the kinds & specific kind of choses [choices]
that [are] going into making them. but again, the dis-
tinction i wld draw separates random inspired propcedural
decsion [procedural decision] making from the use of a
particular procedural method (or several simultaneously)
& wroking [working] out what will end up in the poem as
you go along (in situ) so that each “reading” you choose
(wch is to say each poem) presses back at you, you mean
it. the pursiut [pursuit] then to make sense -- that i’m
looking to find a rdng of the vocab that will bring it
into new life, charge it with meaning. i ofetn [often]
feel i am searching for a particular kind of vaocabulary
[vocabulary] in a given wrtng & wldnt feel that any one at
hand wld do -- tho sometimes the at hand serves to open up
new possibilities of exploration. “Ten Portraits” reminds
me of the “Sentences” section of Parsing -- wch had its
genesis as cut ups of taped talking -- wch seemed to me
to get at the accents of spoken thought -- located in my
sense of loss -- always a central linguistic issue -- the
loss of sense -- discohesion -- here located where it per-
haps most belongs -- in the relationship/ distance from/
to another person (cf. “Shifters”). “Ten Portraits,” tho,
is more concversational [conversational] than “Sentences”
-- reminding me a little of Giorno’s talking dislocation.
i like the poem very much. i hear the presence of human
communicativeness -- a telling -- here suspended for me so
that i can look at it -- wch gives an urgency to the lan-
guage -- a highly energized field of meaning in it ---- i
continued to be just as excited abt the other pieces. (the
book’s design, too, is wonderful.) seemed to me in this
wrk youve made the “human leap” from the experimental,
“open field” stuff of MUFFINS to consistently energized
(charged, strong . . .) poetry. & it felt close to my own
wrk, particularly of the Asylum sort, but also the second
 The Language Letters 255

half of Parsing & other individual poems. e.g. the inter-

est in the phrase rather than the word or morph as the
basic construction unit (be interested to know what you
thought of that bk as well for “For----” in the new Roof.)
the title poem is terrific (“a scrutiny w/in himself” “its
own spark” are the kinds of units i love, also the use of
puctaion [punctuation] ()s without clsong [closing] & so
on is similar to my wrk & well done). anyway ive gone on
very long & still have some more things to bring up so ill
leave off discussion of OWS maybe for another time when i
have the energy to get more specific -- but it is a fine &
absolutely concsistnetly [consistently] fine -- wrk, to my
eyes. (music!)

Charles

————

47. Charles Bernstein to Ron Silliman (6/8/77)

dear ron,
dont think it will be possible to continue this letter in this typeface. what
do you think? see you put me in a room with one of the selectrics and i’m
like the man who won the $22,000 Question and all of a sudden went
from one suit to twenty, became very upset cause he cldnt decide what
suit to wear. & actually i must really be into it cause i am getting one
of these machines for my very own, as a gift from my parents (who are
alwys asking me what can i get let me buy you a new suit a new stereo
well one day i stopped saying no long enuf to get out, well, maybe a
typewriter & low [lo] & behold, it came today (tho this machine is
at wrk) & i have this Script element in to do the italics for the last
section of our dyad. it is a beautiful spring like day & ive just gotton to
page 42 of my second rdng of 2197 & thought well might as well get
down the notebk notes ive made so far & then add to as i finish up the
second rdng (the third rdng i expect will be a reread of the whole 4 bk
wrk). another thing that strikes me tho is that for some reason i’m not
making my usual botch of the typing, wch begins to confirm that when i
do that it really is emotion clouding over.
256  The Language Letters

ah yes, this is much better. got yr letter. one thing you

didnt mention is my suggestions for a provisional interum
[interim] newsletter & esp. (my first priority right now)
distributing svc. let me know on this. i think i will call
to talk abt it before i leave my job june 30 -- getting in
the free phone, so you can count on a 15 minute call to
follow up any letter remarks -- or you can just wait till
i call you, wchever. [. . .] maybe i shld handwrite my
next letter to you as a change of condition. by the way,
i read Robin’s essay on Spicer as well as Language & part
of Lorca, using the excuse that i had to get thru at least
that much before finishing our dyad, since its mentioned
therein, & was quite impressed with Robin’s work, a great
essay, tho he seems to lose the focus (at least the focus
i was most interested in -- his concept of the “outside” &
“dictation” as relating to the condition of being language
bound as such) twrd the end. am thinking of wrtng an essay
on Hannah’s wrk this summer (looks like we’ll be getting
a place in Vermont for August & be in NY for July) using
some of this stuff to explain her SEEN WORDS, concept of
group mind, & the way she integrates a complete ideolog-
ical commitment to Mayeresque natural writing, i.e., as
it comes out, with the actuality of disruptive “outside”
“juxtaposed” elemtns [elements] -- really remarkable syn-
thesis. been going to the movies, relief & avoidance i
guess of the enormous amnt of wrk i feel piling up -- best
Bresson’s Lancèlot du Lac, tho Rocky surprisingly gd, The
Greatest a little lame, Black Sunday taut but vacuous (gd
Bruce Dern performance tho), all the Fassbinder greats
(favorites being Merchant of Four Seasons, Ali, Fox, &
Petra (as the best of its depersonalized visual style),
American Soldier, Effi Breast [Briest].) The Wilson/Childs
piece was great -- but you shld know that it is not repre-
sentative of his other wrk.

-------
okay, with two rdngs, let me talk about 2197. first, i
felt a real weight of Ketjak hanging over me as i read
2197 & to release myself from it by better locating it,
 The Language Letters 257

i reread a large part of it. in Ketjak i found what i

felt was absent from 2197 -- the density of staggering
insights & specific pin point images, one upon the next
in an unbelievably continuous unrelenting magnificent
succession -- it occurred to me that while this wrk has
loomed in the minds of those of us who immediately recog-
nized its importance it must also have a pretty big loom-
ing in yr mind, the “author” who must go on after this
piling of specific objects, insights, observations, theo-
rectetical [theoretical] remarks, memories -- juxtaposed
in sentences one piled upon another. in Ketjak, for exam-
ple, you use sentences like the “Form is” sentences of
2197, but never with the same overtness, ingenuousness.
Ketjak’s power is largely in its unending succession of
details, observed with incredible precision, accuracy.
2197, largely stripped of the unrelentingness of the prop-
osition that is Ketjak, seems rather built (& to see this
was what lifted the weight of Ketjak off the back of 2197
for me) on the proposition -- “The langorousness of the
casual deserves language” wch once i saw at the end of
my first rdng kept popping up again & again in the sec-
ond rdng. the proposition seems almost to be of a Cali-
fornia language, tho i wldnt want to press this. coupled
with the most obvious feature of 2197 (wch i mentioned
in my last letter) the syntax strategy (the very stuff,
unlike Ketjak, of an effaced reference, words’ depic-
tive qualities being melted -- made to run is the water
image that kept coming to mind, like the hand smearing
the ink in one of yr other bks). Well, langorousness led
to spring. “The presence of a new season” (4 bks -- Sun-
set being Summer; Chinese Ntbk, Fall; Ketjak, Winter;
2197, Spring????) -- “Spring language” “Spring as lan-
gorous, casual of language” “This is the spring between
casual and langorous” once i picked up on this it kept
recurring, obviously, so a “casual” language, the spring,
well spring of it -- “haze not glow” (Ketjak, in my sense
of it, being Glow, with its elctric like [electric-­
like]
impermeable intenssty [intensity]). The proposition is a
great one: we are all continuously relying on intensity,
258  The Language Letters

density, enjambment, over-imaging, seriousness & self-­

seriousness & here is a way of getting at a change of
pace. another aspect to this -- i’m not as sure it
works for me -- is the use of meta-comments in a
way ususual in yr wrk -- “Remorseful, it’s all the
progressions” “World should not have syntax” “Poems
should not have goals” “I visit my realism in the
strategy” variations on “random inserts” &c. while
typing these out right now i am actually liking
these sentences but in context they struck me as de-­
intensifying elements (so langorousness) wch, tho,
distracted from the spell of the language (wch of
course might be just the point. i remember when i
gave bruce his initial copy -- no i was showing him
my copy just after it came, we were standing on line
to see Three Women, anyway, he flips thru & says
“World should not have syntax” very amazed by the
line --). course, part of the thing with these sen-
tences is that they are not in the permutated syntax
that many of the other sentences in the work have
-- “The language worked its way over the informa-
tion” wch is fine, the very process of the reording
[reordering] structure -- wrds inserted and per-
mutated to efface (of course not eliminate) refer-
ence -- the elaborate repetition structure creating
a kind of literal fugue within the sentences. Sys-
tematic sense of dislocation, relocation (Spicer’s
Take a step back / & look at the sentence). 52 “The
true of things.” (wch actually relies on a process
of wrds becoming literal, cf. Walden.) altho i see
the repetition strategy as essential to the wrk &
its purposes (i.e., creating not build up & tension
& symphonic whatever at Ketjak -- but for defusion),
i still wonder abt it, again, since it doesnt seem
to intensify the language (Ketjak) but to entropy it
out. cldnt always see the necessity in the paragraph

52. Bernstein also refers to these lines by Jack Spicer in his letter to McCaffery of “early
June ’77” (this volume, 249n51).
 The Language Letters 259

coherence in some of the sections -- i.e., what sep-

arates it from just “listing” (cf. “Ossip” sect)
-- while in the first (“Marion”) section i cld see
the balance & mvmnt (an altogether great section).
anyaway [anyway], i’m obviously swaying back & forth
in what i’m saying here -- feeling two ways. being
of two minds on the subject, as its sd. i thought of
a Greenwald line from “You Bet” (still a ms.) where
he says something like “Console me with a language
part familiar part foreign to my ear” as if for con-
solation we needed language to be slightly off but
have the sound & movement of the famiar [familiar]
-- to make us feel at home. i thought of Ted’s wrk
in respect to the langorousness of 2197 -- the spa-
ciousness of the wrk; but still the repetion [rep-
etition] (for instance) often feels to me almost
like an experiment in the generating of meaning
rather than the actual intensity (that wrd again --
the beginning of seeing a reification of my own in
this letter) of it. off & on. mind wonders -- hazy
not grip. punctuated by incredible rivets of spe-
cific unit -- “present moving from a long instant
of merely” (a more-terrific line (a poem in itself)
than most i ever see) or right now, staring at
the last paragraph on p. 41, wch looms quite beau-
tifully in my mind ----- image . . . vision (a la
wings in throat) of people standing on page, waving
me in. . . . . . “The Four Protazoas” also seemed to
me particualy [particularly] strong. “the
present is merely a moving instant” “Loss
is the specific freedom” (cf. what i sd abt lan-
guage as choice in my last letter with my first
couple of comments on 2197) -- perhaps also the
loss of my expectations just as the
rain worked its way over the loss -- the rain dis-
solving -- smearing i really mean -- blurring --
the referentiality of the language like it blurs
ink on the page loss, langorousness, freedom
260  The Language Letters

-- we all wet with it-------------------------------

####+++++=================================!!!!!!!!!!!====
==============

i did get a letter from Barry last week, wch included blow
by blow takes on some of my wrk. cldnt help feeling he was
being a bit obscure and provakative [provocative] -- i.e.,
cldnt usually make out what he meant, but wanted to. he also
seemed to me to pretty much misunderstand how to read the
stuff, wch i found discouraging, & to be ungenerous in rdng,
wch was even more discouraging. however, hes obviously very
interested -- & i cant help wondering if his prblms with my
wrk dont have something to do with his relationship to you.
anyway, ive already written him back, & i am interested to
see where our correspondence goes -- i think it cld be real
interesting -- the clash of aesthetics.

have just gotton back from a mtg w/ James Sherry, Ray, Bruce,
& i (the illusion that this letter is one sitting is just
that -- i started it thursday & its now sunday -- on & off
-- i keep being (often pleasantly sometimes distractingly)
interrupted) where we made up a tentative arrangement for
Roof #3 -- wch will be 50 pages [CB annotates: of our wrk] in
all -- w/ solo & Legend wrks by the five of us involved in
the collaboration. an afternoon of coffee & dope.

heres how its likely to look: a regular magazine selec-

tion with some gd wrk including Seaton & Piombino --
theyre trying to get wrk from Coolidge -- & also what
seems to be some uninteresting stuff a la #2. a graphic
page will break the mag in two -- then our names & poss
some explanatory comment by Sherry then Bruce: “1948”
me: “Palukaville” Ray: some misc poems & a visual
poem Steve -- abt five pages of wrk, real gd & then
yr “Stalinoids” (abt 9 pages in the mag) then an intro
page with “from Legend” & the star & a brief explanatory
note by us on the same page, then Bruce-Ron, Ray-Steve,
Charles-Steve, Ray-Ron & finishing up with Ron-Charles-
Bruce -- in that order. Shld be quite a gd chunk. i expect
 The Language Letters 261

that James will get in touch with you for an okay on yr

work -- & Bruce as well on yr dyad with him -- so this is
just a news flash.

rdng yr 2 june letter: FLUKE JoY (not the name but the
first line) is very gd & am glad you gave it the stamp
-- one of my favorites . . . hm, seems like ive gotton to
everything i can think now . . . oughtta i suppose reread
this & see what ive said & then off to it. . . . . . . .

see ya soon ---

lOve,,,

Charles

ps/ woke up this morning (monday 6/13) &, deciding to be

even later to wrk (i rarely get there before 10 lately)
started to read “The Invasion of the Stalinoids” section
. . . hm, shld take this to work, dwnstairs & get yr let-
ter, so now i know ive got to say more before this goes
off. for one thinkg [thing] i feel i stopped midway in my
comments on 2197 -- obviously the wrk is calling on me to
read & reread it & on each reread i get more -- even enjoy
it more & i think i get maximum pleasure from it (wch is a
criterion only for itself) when i just read one section at
a time, wch i havent accounted for in my comments above.
its clear to me that the piece is a major wrk, i take that
as the given anyway, so all my ideas here are thinking out
loud wch i send to you since it seems like immediate feed-
back on a work, even if a bit hazy, is useful & energiz-
ing. by the way, if you notice the last few pages there is
much more space between the letters than on page 1 & here
-- its because i had the pica spacing on rather than the
elite spacing -- an error.

as to yr letter -- well, a real up to get all that enthu-

siasm, but, as you say, the piece is totally a part
of what we did together there & tho it may seem that
262  The Language Letters

authorship of sections is clearer than in say our triad w/

Bruce, still, the whole piece is a collaboration & youre
pretty resp for that last section too -- as you know many
of the images come from the previous sections -- & i’m
glad that in the course of the whole wrk we got to men-
tion Steve, Ray & Bruce at crucial moments. of course go
ahead & use it in Tottel’s -- actually that occurred to
me immediately on rdng yr first paragraph & was amazed to
see you say it later in the letter since i was gonna men-
tion to you here anyway. correspondence seems a really
worthwhile focus to me -- Nick Piombino (with whom i [am]
doing a performance/rdng tonight at St Marks -- we’ll each
be rdng sections from each other’s wrk, i.e., he & i both
will read parts of the (first) “working” section of “Three
or Four Things,” will play some tape stuff of mine & i’ll
read “For----”) mentioned that Ed Friedman sd what was
similar abt Nick & my wrk was that much of it was meant to
be read to (read by) someone else, i.e., a telling, wch
thought struck me as an aspect that’s worth looking at, &
the Tottel’s shld be a gd place for it (here i also think
of Riding’s “The Telling” . . . oops, Riding-Jackson.

yr simultaneity idea of the triad w/ Steve is right on

line w/my suggestions in my last letter, so obv i’m for it
& will proceed (getting it out to you this aft or tmrw)
. . . Ted Greenwald told me this morn he had that bk in
the mail already since the Monday before the Friday you
spoke to Curtis. . . . readings here, yr letter reminds
me: Bruce’s very spectacular, enormously well attended,
very appreciated rdng -- big success . . . i did send the
last two sections of our diad out to Ray, Bruce & Steve &
sent my section #2 (i.e., the fourth section of the piece)
out when i wrote it -- so i think everyone shld have
everything -- but we shld (i will) check with Steve. . . .
by the way the stuff Steve sent to Roof was the best
poetry i’ve seen of his (as thought R & B) -- fine stuff.

so, with this little add to, i really will get this off.
 The Language Letters 263

————

48. Lyn Hejinian to Ron Silliman (6/16/77)

Dear Ron,

Thanks for your letter. I’d meant to write you, in any case,
before, but was delayed by one thing and another -- not
least of which, of course, was Barbara’s visit. It was good,
very. For me, at least, a visitation from another world. And
she left claiming that she was going to try to change her
life (the domestic, I think; not the artistic). She said
one evening -- I think the last, as we sat outside with the
children waiting for the dinner to cook -- that you had
said I was the very opposite of her. I think that may be,
indeed, true. Yet, in the only area (well, not quite, since
her feminist sympathies seem too much of a bias, a limit-
ing “point of view”) -- so, in nearly the only area where I
would strongly disagree with her, I let slip away, as being,
well, dangerous ground. That is the area you mention, her
ambitions for her art, which are the opposite of mine. She
said she had been told, and firmly believed, that one has to
“grow up and sell out.” I would say, that one learns it will
do no one any good but you have to hang on, and hang on, and
hang on still longer, to what you believe is the best use of
your language and intelligence. I believe that so vehemently
-- call it integrity, I guess -- that I wouldn’t want to
argue it with her.

And yet -- I had the insight, one afternoon, watching her

pace the plywood floor while we were talking, that it’s
not the intended person that one likes (or loves), but
the revealed person -- the person as tender rather than
intended. The revealed Barbara I did learn to love, and it
was a wonderful visit.

She told me of her TALK. I was glad I wasn’t there. She

was at first distressed, and then I think relieved, by the
incident. She thought it had cleared ground.
264  The Language Letters

Since she left, ten days ago, life has returned somewhat
to normal -- though Larry is still in New York and will be
until Sunday night. The children have finished school, with
Class Picnics, and an Awards Assembly. Why I love those
events -- and the Band Concert, to which I dragged Barbara
-- is another story. Children. I like having them home, in
the summers. Anna has cooked a pudding a day -- with vary-
ing degrees of success. Paull is reading the complete works
of Edgar Rice Burroughs. We are reading Hemingway aloud --
short stories. Some they like; some they think “end in a
dumb way.”

And I’ve been reading, and reading. I finished the Der-

rida book, with a sudden breakthrough to understanding in
the last chapter. Some understanding. SPEECH AND PHENOM-
ENA presupposes a familiarity with Husserl which I sim-
ply don’t have. Then the new Roland Barthes book, ROLAND
BARTHES. That is wonderful. And John Berryman’s THE FREE-
DOM OF THE POET, wonderfully scholarly essays on assorted
heroes of literature; only the Conrad essay didn’t suit my
interests -- being a divulging of the sexual unconscious
in HEART OF DARKNESS, wherein a trench is a vagina, a bro-
ken pipe the threatened penis, etc. -- the very worst sort
of usury.

I wonder if a return to relevant philosophy is possi-

ble -- and the philosophical essay as a literary form.
For so long such inbred, specialized philosophy (or what
passes for such) has held the floor -- Quine, and his
cohorts.

As for my own writing -- hmm. Just now, transitional. I

don’t quite know where I’m going, with my wad of notes;
to Berkeley, I guess. The move is all but upon us, and my
art will turn to painting walls and the greasy refrig-
erator that came with the house. We move around July 8
or 9 -- after Frontier Days in Willits, the 51st Annual,
Four Day Rodeo, Barbecue, Cowboy Breakfast, Street Dance,
 The Language Letters 265

Carnival, Raffle, and Fireman’s War. The kids are working

at the rodeo; we’ll pack and leave just afterwards.

Very best, as always,

Lyn

Nearly forgot to mention here how pleased I’d be to do

something for the next Tottel’s; thank you. When you have
the issue more clearly in mind, it would be good to know
how large a section of work you would want. Maybe that’s
what I’ll do with my wad of notes.]

Love,

Lyn

————

49. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman (7/16/77)

98˚

Dear Ron,

Life forms its own trajectory & we hop on board at what-

ever place we find room. Rooms.

Time spent this hot day with Charles growing enthused

as the distribution idea takes shape, and glad to have
you as part of a trio (with the work of Ch. & I on the
newsletter, tentatively titled GLOSSOLALIA, as an inter-
nal duo within that language collective, which is how I
think of it), and that whole trio (and I’m as yet unsat-
isfied with the name Thirds; we had tossed around others,
such as Apparatus, and Arc -- still none perfect) tak-
ing place in some ways within the five way legend, and
those five within a larger arc of writers doing this sort
of work, and all of that within a social order within a
266  The Language Letters

world system within or upon a physical planet within a

galaxy etc. Star Wars.

The distribution service such a right idea for this time

& place. Everyone agreed who I’ve talked to, including
those in DC and there are now several younger writers who
are dealing with similar issues & very taken with what we
are doing, know the work, up against the same problems of
access I felt so sharply several years back when I wanted
to see work the way I’d feel trying to get vital research
materials from an understocked library and yet this time
there was no assurance that anywhere else a really well
stocked library existed: people like Kirby Malone, Mar-
shall Reese, Diane Ward, all years younger than Dreyer,
Darragh, Inman, Lang. Very exciting reading there as well
-- did two 30-45 minutes sets of LOVE SONGS, first about a
dozen performance pieces with 2-4 voices, and then a set
of the more “poem” like works from the ms. Response got
me high. And livelier talk than ever before in DC. Anselm
Hollo, who is a close friend of Malone’s, came down to
DC from Baltimore to check it out, met him for the first
time. Was flattering, especially about my work & had high
praise for yr “Disappearance” article. Innaresting.

I’ll talk about other things later, but wanted to give

you the scoop about the distribution service conversation:

Our list, all tentative though pretty definite at this

point, is: DiPalma, Coolidge, Dreyer, Silliman, Mayer,
Greenwald, Melnick, Weiner, Mac Low, Grenier, Waldrop-K,
Waldrop-R, McCaffery, Bernstein, Andrews, Raworth, Palmer,
Lang, Baracks, plus mags: o.p. issues of This, Tottel’s,
Big Deal, Shirt, 0-9. These are at least the people we had
thought of checking with. Very possible many or some will
have nothing or nothing they want to make available.

We’re “passing” on these, for now: Eigner, Higgins, Lally,

Inman, Faville, Acconci, Stamos, Watten, Perelman, Arman-
trout, Robinson, Piombino, Seaton, Darragh -- for reasons
 The Language Letters 267

I could specify in each case. Also, several of those on

our list of 19 may not work out.

The key will be (a) out of print work by small presses

and (b) manuscripts with a less than likely shot at pub-
lication soon. That’s why many of those on my “PASS” list
ended up there -- for ex. Watten, Higgins (with most work
we’d want to print in print), or Armantrout, Inman, Seaton
(with smaller bodies of work likely to get there soon).

The onus will be on the authors to provide us with a cam-

era ready copy, either an original (of a book, for ex.), a
new typing of a typescript, or a Kodak (i.e., DARK) copy
of it from which we can xerox. Otherwise, it’d be too much
hassle to have to rip our copies open to copy from, etc.

Let me know how this list strikes you, remembering that

we easily can [BA annotates: & hope to] add mss. or names
as time goes on.

Many of these are ones we’d like you to write to, to

solicit specific mss., enthusiasm, and info about page
lengths.

Specifically:

1. Grenier -- I don’t see our doing Sentences in near

future. Complicated reasoning, but I think you’d probably
agree after some consideration of the difficulties which
it would entail. Also, the $$$. Did Faville sell out that
set of cards? I thought Barry was going to do it? (Did I
mention Barry proposed doing SONNETS (Momento Mori) as a
THIS book, or did he mention it to you. Hope that works
out. (Heard, via Ray, some criticisms from you about the
few pieces in ROOF, as an entrée to the larger problem of
my habit of doing long “sets” of related shorter pieces, as
contrasted with your habit of setting up long single works
which may be just as full of “similar” material and I’d
think open to the same, misplaced in my view, criticism.
268  The Language Letters

I.e., how does one page of the SONNETS differ in its pro-
posal from any single page of Sunset Debris, once the
detailed and possibly subsidiary particulars of a program-
matic overlay fade out of the latter.) Anyway, I think we
should see if there are unpublished works of Grenier that
he’d want included as photo-copyable pages in the service.
were the
Very possible not, but felt you one to approach him.
(odd, that, typewriter, fucked, up, spacing, there)

2. Coolidge -- we’d thought of asking him for reproduc-

ible copies of 3-5 works, besides the Tottel’s issue. Pos-
sibly his o.p. booklets, like Ing, The So, Suite V, or even
the Lines Press works from long ago. Or maybe the Big Sky
issue if that is o.p. Or particular mss. of his from the
past, or present, that he’d like especially to make avail-
able. [BA inserts: Even (unlikely) parts of current work.]

3. Waldrops -- check, likewise: A. if any of the B.D.

[Burning Deck] books of theirs are o.p., and B. if there
are other recent mss. of poems that they’d like to see in
this service.

4. Raworth -- ditto: maybe Ray’s book, we’ll check to

see if o.p. And maybe a recent ms. or two.

5. Watten -- check to see which issues of THIS are o.p.

& if he’ll send a single copy of each.

6. Perelman -- thought it best to wait on Bob, since

Braille is in print, as far we know, & suspect his recent
work will be the contents of a single second book [BA
annotates: like Barry, I felt, though could be wrong]. Is
there a larger body of recent work that we should know
about, however, to reconsider our placing him for now in
the PASS category? Mention this because you have strong
characterization of his work in letters of late & want to
doublecheck yr sense of it.

7. Melnick -- since Eclogs is in print, I’d like to

 The Language Letters 269

include (A) PCOET, mentioning that a limited # of copies

exist and we could handle whatever trickle or orders come
in [BA annotates: and maybe another ms. if such exists].
Just as we can do with MOHAWK, if you want, and VOWELS,
which is almost or already o.p. Also, when you write Wal-
drops, check on NOX & CORONA to see if they are o.p.; if
they’re out of print, or near so, we could and should list
them.

8. Silliman -- who he? Oh. Is AGE OF HUTS the title

for the 4 part piece? Besides “Horizon” & “Disappearance”
(any other essays?) would want to list 2197. ChiNot, Sun-
Deb (Barry doing Ketjak, right?). Or what? Charles’ letter
from you mentioned “Map of Morning” -- what is that? Have
I forgotten a major title? What about aRb, or the rest of
Wet Loom Star besides Nox, Mohawk. Also, which issues of
Tottel’s do you think would be appropriate?

We’ll send a list of the mss. we were thinking of solic-

iting from the others soon: Bernstein, DiPalma, Dreyer,
Mayer, Greenwald, Mac Low, Weiner, Baracks (the work up to
Varnished Truth, for ex., we thought of, at last minute),
McCaffein [McCaffery], Android [Andrews], etc. Plus mags.
We’ll take care of the correspondence on those.

this is this.

Love,

Bruce

P.S. a notably business-like letter [BA annotates: unre-

lated to my general sense of rapt (rapped?) respect & car-
ing about you & your work. I’ve about given up any hope of
being more than an erratic letter writer for the near or
270  The Language Letters

middle future: no need to fool myself. Am happy though.

See me through this!]. Hope my copy of HORIZON will arrive
tomorrow -- jealously hearing bits of it on phone.

————

50. Charles Bernstein to Barrett Watten (7/17/77),

excerpt

your last letter did make an entry into my thinking (??) i

mean ive thought a lot abt it -- i think in yr delineation
of a disagreement with me (what i’m doing) you clarified
just what we are all doing, for me anyway, made me see
more clearly certain concerns that had been more intuitive
before -- & in a sense made me even more interested in
pressing what you take to be the disruptive quality of my
wrk. in a way i pressed you into coming on with a formal
critique, so at this pt it seems important to me to empha-
size that i dont think its important to have any kind of
unified theory to operate out of, nor that all the wrtng
i like (think important . . .) need come out of congru-
ent theoretical concerns, senses of what we’re up to, &c.
critical thinking has its value primarily in bringing fwrd
attention to features, qualities, moves, architectures of
the wrtng being talked abt -- its descriptive, elucidating
value -- not in prescribing whats to be done whats best to
be done &c. its best bet is in helping to understand whats
being done -- in a sense guide the reading of the wrk.

[. . . .]

the form, i understand you to be saying, shld pop on you

as you read, you shld be able to see its borders and the
rdng is then a “reading in” following the moves made within
the matrix set up. wch really sets up Silliman as doing
the paradigm wrk. (wch seems to me to be a possibility, not
the. . . .) in some ways i disagree with Silliman’s matrix
theory, even tho i think it has enormous value in bring-
ing out the issues. what first struck me when he mailed
 The Language Letters 271

me a version was that he was just finding another way to

get to form/content (mind/body) binaryism, tho his wild
“i” is presumably the way he gets arnd that -- tho that
“i” is so wild (Wild Logos Blaser says quoting somebody or
other) that it leaves a lot open, wch is why i dont par-
ticularly object to his “theory” tho ive alwys wondered
what the nec of a theory is, tho Rons answered me on this
that hes trying to get us to see what we’re doing, hence
increase our ability to acknowledge the frame (a venera-
ble modernist concern) & not operate unconsciously when we
dont have to -- wch i think is a fine answer. but i can
see now how yr use of his model -- value operates as moves
within a particular matrix -- wch leads directly to yr say-
ing “so i am arguing for a greater separation of form and
content in yr wrk”: in other wrds i see you using Ron’s
theory to put fwrd an aesthetic of single surface -- even-
ness -- wch seems to me can be called into question as an
unnecessarily arbitrary border -- really an imposition of
a two-dimensional spatial notion on a three & four (i.e.,
time) dimensional language. McCaffery has suggested that a
“moebius” twisting is what i’m getting at in my wrk (how
each next particular in the “Signs of the Particularities”
essentially twists the matrix -- that the matrix -- if its
to be a deep as the ---- of language isnt flat or delin-
eated but constantly transforming, switching, flipping --
that language is “before” form and content & in its thick-
ness they are both intertwined, swirled up -- Heidegger
talks of Dasein (being in) as encompising [encompassing]
subject and object, that to make the distinction at all
is the mistake that inevitably leads to dualism or posi-
tivism (the assertion that we’re after “subjectivity” or
“objectivity” instead of the “inhood” that is the “thrown-
ness” of the world. i dont like to throw arnd these wrds &
i dont mean to assert a philosophical theory . . . in that
sense i go with Wittgenstein in thinking of this “theoriz-
ing” as valuable only as a therapy to restore whats gotton
distorted by too much talk, too much theorizing. . . . in
a way by twisting the matrix at each turn i am meaning to
plunge my language back into the language. . . .
272  The Language Letters

so disruption of exactly that popping out of the form from

the content that you meantion [mention] is just what i’m
up to. & youve been uncannily perceptive in zeroing in
on this, tho, for me, (sadly) unresponsive to its worth.
what becomes interesting out of this is the movement, pre-
cisely wrkng with this mvnt, from one “textuality” (i.e.,
one mode, one matrix rule times vocabul construction)
to another (different) “textuality” -- a movement whose
active possibility in the generating of poetry you seem at
this pt unwilling to acknowledge . . . tho of course maybe
its that no wrk has been strong enuf to make you see this
possibility realized, since i do not mean to put you in
a category of someone holding a priori concepts of whats
possible for art to be made of, but rather one who is, as
i am, continually astonished at how new possibilities are
contantly [constantly] being presented to us, redifing
[redefining] our whole concept of the limits of the art --
really not redefining -- faithfulness to the art form is a
mark of wrk thats important to me -- lets just say recon-
stitutes the limits (“and limits are/ what any of us/ all
of us/ ??/ are INside OF”53).

Bruce’s wrk (as you point out) is, as is much of Ron’s,

tho in a different way, a model of operating in a matrix
way rather than a “moebius” one -- while he is not inter-
ested in making his rules apparent as is Ron (something
wch he and i share -- i can remember him being particu-
larly taken by my description of pushing the “syntax” [--]
the method that makes a piece have conhesion, intention
-- just as far as i cld -- “stretching my mind” -- just
so i knew it made sense but not quite why, being unhappy
with relations that were obvious, made the sense of the
ready at hand -- i.e., pushing the composition to the
very limits of sense, meaning -- to that razor’s edge of
judgement/aesthetic sense (what i suspect you might call,

53. See Charles Olson, from Maximus “Letter 5”: “Limits / are what any of us / are inside
of,” in The Maximus Poems, ed. George F. Butterick (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1983), 21.
 The Language Letters 273

for good reason -- PERCEPTION -- a wrd wch i shy away from

only because it implies that “looking” is outward on a
“world” not a gaze inside the language that makes up the
world).54 this you might say is something that Andrews
and i have in common & in distinction from Silliman. but
still, Bruce is interested in taut surfaces -- perspic-
uousness i like to call it -- wch acnts for some of his
most startling wrk (that immensely wide love song in
Florica Danica, in wch the wrds seem to float all on the
same plane -- ah PLANE is another wrd useful in this con-
versation (the only way wrtng this is making sense to me
is as if i’m talking to you, imagining yr replies & going
on) -- i.e., plane vs. moebius as to architectual (archi-
textual) topographies (ugh) of poetry).

[. . . .]

what i dont like abt the unified field theory i’m attribut-
ing in part to you (& incidentally this may be the flaw in
the whole Projective Open Field thing -- that it insists on
a single web, a unified field, one matrix) (but to have a
flaw is no prblm -- theres no way out of flaws & my attempt
to get out from under the unified field will no doubt have
to be gotton out from under by some other seeing its flaw,
what i cant see, the thing is to do it pushing as strong &
hard as you can, steeping in it . . .). . . . anyway what
i dont like abt the unified field theory is that it rules
out the most radical uses of relationship (the hard core
of composition) -- comparing, contrasting, problematizing,
bringing one thing agst another, juxtaposition, montage
. . . i.e., it takes of [on] an almost Minimalist aesthetic
of wanting one overall object without moving parts in rela-
tion to each other, so in a sense creates a new possibil-
ity for the Image, rather than deconstructing the imaging

54. These sentences, only slightly altered, appear at the conclusion of Bernstein’s essay
“Semblance”—which also addresses the “moebius” model and the matrix theory—originally
published as part of Ken Edwards’s symposium on recent American poetry in Reality Studios
2 (1980): 66–68. The essay is collected in Content’s Dream, 34–39.
274  The Language Letters

-- breaking it down into parts wch relate to one another,

the work being created in the relations.

[. . . .]

wch does not mean that i havnt & wont again produce wrks
wch operate on the terms you have argued for and wch yr
bk, Decay, is a powerful example of the possibility. but,
in the context of this discussion, this “therapizing” of
our ideas blown away by ungrounded idea-izing, i have been
speaking for the value of “decontextualization” -- each
sentence/unit decontextualizing the sentence/unit prior,
wch seems a way of making a text rooted in language, in
humaness [humanness] -- that hum of inhood, silly as it
sounds to say. wch is just as much outhood, too.

OKAY -- whew -- enuf. i’ll be going up to Vermont on

August 1 right through Labor Day so any mail that’ll be
going to me during that time shld be sent:

c/o Aloha Manner [Manor] (no kidding)

Fairlee VT 05045

& do get back to me, hopefully sooner than the month it

took me to get back to you here. also i guess i’ll be in
touch on some other projects that /Bruce & i/ and /Ron,
Bruce & i/ will want to involve you in -- LOOKING FWRD to
the new THIS --

best+++++++,

Charles

————

51. Bruce Andrews to Lyn Hejinian (7/29/77)

Dear Lyn,

Tardy writing, which has become tradition with me.

 The Language Letters 275

I thank you for a good letter this spring, much appre-

ciated and hopefully I’ll be able at times to hold up
an end out here. Busy of late, doing quite a bit of new
writing, working on an essay on Tennis Court Oath for the
Ashbery VORT issue and an article on civil liberties &
foreign policy, research (continuing) on a book I’m end-
lessly writing on Vietnam (EMPIRE & Society), a play for
voices, etc. Lots of movies, much time alone, walks, café
con leché. Also, Charles Bernstein and I are beginning a
writing, to
newsletter, bi-monthly, this fall, on language/writing, to
focus
focus attention
attention where
where it
it deserves
deserves to
to be
be focused
focused (inter-
esting slant this typewriter is creating)-- including
reviews, essays, texts, plus bibliographic essays on about
15 writers (like Coolidge, Grenier, Mac Low, Eigner, Sil-
liman, Mayer, Palmer, etc.), and info about magazines. A
source of real energy of late, and something about which
Charles is going to be getting in touch with you (to see
what you might consider writing about. . .).

Addresses you asked for: Paul Auster (LIVING HAND) is

Millis Road, Box 252, Stanfordville, N.Y. 12581; Tod Kabza
(FLORA DANICA) is 311 Ann St., Ann Arbor, Mich. 48108. [BA
annotates: Probably should just send them a few bucks, for
latest issue. FLORA especially ravishing.] You know Perel-
man’s HILLS, Alan Davies’ 100 POSTERS, Phoebe MacAdams’
ATTABOY, Mark Karlins’ TEXT? Other possibilities.

I’ve been having a chance to read your work -- most

recently in THIS 8, and the MASK book, which Rosmarie
sent. The work in THIS I had some difficulty with, feel-
ing that you were not pushing things in the language as
far as they seemed to want to be carried, thus leaving the
surface a thinner and prettier composition than the mate-
rial might call for. A MASK has some lovely passages, and
is certainly handsomely done. Especially liked what was
happening on page one, in many of the epigrammatic con-
structions, in part 3 of the piece right before “Song,”
in “The Soft Face,” in 6, 8, and 9 of “Notes Toward” (the
end of #9 being almost a review of the book for me), and
more. We come from different places, so this may seem only
276  The Language Letters

an idiosyncratic “take,” but I didn’t want to just leave

things at superficial back-slapping since I have great
respect for what you’re doing. I do, though, at times,
feel that a high-toned conservatism prevents a more inde-
pendent & adventurous music from being revealed. (Have
same problem with Susan Howe’s pieces -- in the new EEL --
although she has a different & more limited prosody.)

Be interested, in this spirit (ooh lah lah) of dia-

logue, to hear what you thought of what Barry put together
in the THIS. Or of NONE OF THE ABOVE, which you mentioned
you were ordering. [BA inserts: (Not at all just w/ my
work, in either case, but w/ the whole atmosphere those 2
collections create.)]

Or have you seen the pieces of Paradis by Sollers in

the last few issues of TEL QUEL, etc.

Have heard good things about more of the TUUMBA books

-- could you send me a list of the ones now available, for
I’d like to order a few. We’re going to try to get reviews
of yours, and the Higgins, possibly more, for the news-
letter. Rae Armantrout expressed an interest in writing
something on your work, for example, and I wonder if you
would have in mind some other person to write a text on
your work or books that would focus specifically on the
language/textual/formal/compositional/formal, etc. con-
cerns involved and apparent there. Would like to know. [BA
inserts: Want to open things up a bit, & spread info &
stimulus more widely.]

Yeah, Carla Bley.

Listening to the ’59 meeting of Adderly and Coltrane,

without Miles Davis. Quiet commotion.

Also, I’m finally now getting around to sending you a

manuscript to consider for TUUMBA, bearing in mind your
comment earlier that you were several works ahead and it
 The Language Letters 277

would be some time before a ms. you wanted to do would be

able to appear. The enclosed is “Praxis,” a piece I wrote
last summer and one I’m especially happy with. I thought
it might be right for what you are doing with the series,
and is the size you mentioned being appropriate. See what
you think of it; I read it at Greenwich Books this spring
and it worked well, but I hadn’t sent it to anyone for the
size (a 20 page un-segmented work) made it hard to think
of who would be right. Only inertia, and an inability to
write letters, kept me from sending it to you months back.
I’ve enclosed postage but can’t find an envelope, in case
it has to be returned. Hope not.

Well, I’m glad I got over my correspondence block.

You’re one person (writing warm and sprightly letters,
to boot) I’ve wanted to keep in better touch with, and
regret having not. How was Barbara’s visit, SF readings,
West Coast writing scene, current reading, new crazes, the
series, etc.

All my best,

Bruce

————

52. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman (8/2/77)

Dear Ron,

leave tomorrow (from Aug 4-25, will be c/o Hardin, 287

River Drive, Hadley, Mass.), and Ellen’s been (this is said
to you in privacy, to be respected as such) tremendously
upset lately, my emotional gravity therefore in turmoil,
so this is just a list rather than a letter, which is owed
you, and is in fact it seems always owed you.

1. I gave the letter of yours July 20 to Charles, the

one concerning the distrib. service. He will write you in
278  The Language Letters

reply. He forgot to get me a copy, and he is now gone.

Generally, all is agreed, and your suggested additions
sound as often marvelous. On the passes, as I recall,
I would like to NOT include, in the first listing tho
possibly or easily on later ones, current mss. by Rob-
inson, Perelman -- or Davies, or Dreyer, or etc. if it
seems likely that they will appear within a year or so.
Also, not interested in early work which is not in and of
itself of great sureness (Barry’s Iowa book, for ex., or
Ray’s earliest one(s), or yours, etc. -- I mean the ones
of yours I’ve never seen . . .). Anyhow, Charles has my
detailed thoughts on this and will pass them on.

2. No summer doldrums, but still difficult to write

long letters -- some of which has to do with previously
unacknowledged emotional disorientation. More to the
point with me is that I’ve even had trouble working on
the Vietnam book. Also, and this relates esp. to writ-
ing to you, I’ve had critical responses to the things I’d
normally be responding to thru the mail and my energy for
such criticism is shot. [BA inserts: Your piece on Ray
an exception.] Feel, also, that there’s been too damn
much bristling of late -- including exchanges I’ve seen
copies of between Charles and Barry, problems with Steve
over the collab on my part, your bizarre recording of a
comment from Barry that he wants more tough talk, more
“pushing” from me in letters -- by the bye, he did not
write me that grumpy letter -- I thought of the scene in
DIRTY HARRY where the killer pays the black to beat him
up. And now this exchange between you and Ray, which Ray
read me part of -- part of your reply to god knows what
he said. I’m beginning to wonder if we really have the
sensibilities for actual community building, or whether
we’ve all been on the outside for so long that we’re
just more accustomed to tearing down and cutting up. [BA
inserts: Or protecting ourselves, etc.]

3. On the newsletter, see enclosed. Letters go out in

August, from Charles and me. This is my request to you.
 The Language Letters 279

Specifically, that we are going to have one of the 17 fea-

tures on you & would like a 200-600 word piece, statement,
by you on this Ron Silliman guy and his work. Pretty weird
stuff, but I figured you could handle it. Also, will fea-
ture Melnick, and would like a 200-600 word (I realize how
brief that is, blah blah blah) piece on him by you, feeling
you are the best to do it. One problem we had in drawing up
lists of people to write for this was that you would lit-
erally be the best person to write on most anyone, but we
want to spread things out a bit. Also, natch, that you are
damn busy. But these two, with those length limits as abso-
lute and absolutely sincerely meant, are what we would ask
of you. Of course, any short text on just about anything
that you want to send we would doubtless want very much to
use, and that is an open invitation.

4. Real glad you liked the poems in ROOF, and the

Ashbery piece -- [BA inserts: the latter] my most recent
work of any kind [BA annotates: and work I consider
major]. Any more specific comments on either appreciated.
Have you seen the whole ms. from SONNETS which Barry has
and has proposed to try to do as a book. About 65 pages.
You’re right: Charles’ piece in ROOF is a beaut. Also
appreciate your praise for Funnels In, the title of a col-
lection I’m now putting together, the first since EDGE,
really. [BA inserts: (Reading Mayer’s Poetry at dinner
-- wishing I had a publisher in mind to justify putting
together a ms. of loose pieces of such size -- 200 pp.
typescript I’d guess.)]

5. THIS 8, as a whole, impressive, tho quite a bit

of lame or to me uninteresting works. Best were Seaton,
Coolidge, and my own. Barry’s different for him, clearer,
less strained. Also true of Perelman, but here the energy
gets lost for me in a surface of “nice tone.” This is the
general problem with the issue for me -- a kind of undis-
rupted prettiness pastel-like, without force. Rosenberg’s
went well for the first half, and then engaged in a trans-
formational project in part 2 which I am suspect of, and
280  The Language Letters

find unsustaining. Like in 2197 [BA annotates: though much

less]. Greenwald was strong, Grenier completely inert and
gratuitous save in about 5 or 6 places. Robinson, Palmer,
Hejinian: very dull pieces from good writers. Berkson’s
1st poem a mistake, as with Benson’s first -- though Ben-
son’s others made me want to read him further. Davies
and the Desnos screenplay without point for me. Mayer an
embarrassment, sadly. Will write Barry tonight hopefully
to relay such opinions.

6. All the news you give in those generous and car-

ingly frequent letters, Ron, are an inspiration to me. I
am only sad I’ve been unable to reciprocate. At least this
is a letter, but a negative and abstracted tone has con-
quered it: one main reason I’ve not written: can’t stand
this tone, yet am nervous writing, or nervous not, so it
ends up.

7. Who is Eliot Weinberger? Who are the SF writers?

8. On to quibbles. First the trio [“FLUKE JoY”],

RS?BA?CB? (hmmm, I thought those were slash marks, turned
out as Freudian questions). I didn’t like what you did at
all. First I didn’t feel that, as you said in letter of
July 1, that we “missed” any opportunity to confront the
left margin. Composition needn’t, even for militant lan-
guage-centrists, be so determinedly a “confrontation.” My
disinterest in the “left margin” is clear enough from my
work to date, and I don’t regard it as a missed oppor-
tunity. But, ok, I found the idea of using the form as
given you rather than lengthening it to be hunky dory, and
was interested in [BA inserts: your using] the idea of
altering rhythm, reference, and adding an internal mar-
gin a la POLAROID. No problem except with the particular
way you did so. Which, to my reading, simply undermined
the interest in VERY many of the original phrases and
merely replaced that interest with an extremely heavy-
handed and disadvantageous system. Much more mechanical
than in Coolidge (don’t know H.D. well enough to compare
 The Language Letters 281

with that). It opens itself up to all the faults of your

reliance on repetition strategy in your long works, and,
in this case, the case of an already existing structure,
lessens the piece by the overlay. I would like to propose
-- and this is a query -- you taking another look at it
and see if you can alter the form of it as you received
it without making it into an essay on the variable impli-
cations of so/saw/see. Otherwise, it becomes a much more
stringently conceptual work than the actual strategy can
withstand -- the predictability becomes extreme, and in
doing so, the point of reading is undermined.

9. On 2197. It goes without saying that this is a

decisive impressive and major work. Nevertheless I have
problems with it and I hesitate even going into them.
Partly my mood, partly also because I suspect they will
have little meaning for you. I can hear you working up
counter-propositions already that succeed in making any
point you want to your satisfaction. The repetition strat-
egy operating here is, I think, much less interesting to
others than you might imagine -- more mechanical, obvi-
ous and blunt and graceless, exercisey, etc. -- and this
detracts from an OVERALL reading of the piece. I’ve seen
Charles’ long letter to you on it, just recently, and tend
to agree with his criticisms -- as well, tho only partly,
with the idea of it as a more languorous Californian for-
mat or reading experience. I wonder. Parts were better
than others for me: “I AM MArion Delgado,” “Rhizome,” “SF
Destroyed,” “Turk St. News.” [BA annotates: These parts
were, as units, wonderful. The point of the lengths of the
whole remained obscure, however -- or was “unmotivated,”
except conceptually.] And maybe one in a dozen “sentences”
throughout the work are startling, evocative, powerful,
and exact. (Less than in KETJAK, I think, but that may be
my faulty memory).

From my journal, a week ago: “Ron’s recent ‘systemaniac’

work -- given a vocabulary, this chooses the easiest
of solutions of the aesthetic problem raised by that
282  The Language Letters

vocabulary-or-phrase list & the impossibility of ordering

it randomly. To use (a) grammatical expectations & (b) a
repetition, or repetition-plus-incremental-change system
-- this is to take a way out, an evasion. It flattens and
anesthetizes a language set (THIS 8’s Californians have
that same flattened pretty surface overlaying commotion
& confusion) -- a bargain-basement ‘flattening’ -- which
avoids the heightened flatness which a more variable com-
positional strategy could achieve, which avoids the power
or provocation of juxtaposition, etc. etc. Not disrup-
tive. It also produces works of great length. Thus, a bias
toward longer thinner pieces & disinterest in more con-
densed or ‘micro’ solutions. (related to ambition and [BA
inserts: I think so!] impatience, too). 2197, especially:
also, KETJAK, etc. My favorite works are sentences from
the long pieces and whole shorter ones. In a way, these
books are very impressive -- as books, units of that size,
etc. -- but partially this makes them seem like ‘genre’
concerns. ‘Long poem,’ ‘book,’ not WRITING. Conceptualism
vs. modernism.”

Well, that is not too generous, and not too incisive, but
I thought I’d just quote it. I never do that, funny, quot-
ing journals. I’m taking them to Mass. to edit.

10. On HORIZON. God knows what Ray said to set off this
wave of feeling in the mail. Again, it’s an impressive and
subtle piece of writing; again, some problems were created
for me which you might see as non-problems (and, worse, I
feel a reluctance in mentioning them, for fear you have
already consigned such quibbles to the dustbin of history,
which is indicative of some underground power-play ele-
ments going on in this and other relationships: related
to a certain self-righteousness and over-conviction that
may prevent inhibit criticism without making the origi-
nal work or argument any more convincing.) [BA annotates:
Saying “I welcome criticism” does not mean it can actu-
ally be assimilated. That Ray & I would react in some-
what similar ways does not suggest to me “defensiveness,”
 The Language Letters 283

but something intimidating in the tone of the work. Have

you ever seen Jack Gibb’s brilliant piece on “Defensive
Communication” -- about the creation of defensiveness by
stridency, etc.] (See the idea in the new New Left Review
article on Althusser on dogmatizing thought, which is not
dogmatic in a limited way -- also lovely piece there on
the Cuban Mission to Angola, by the way.) The piece was as
chock full of insights as any I’ve read in a long time,
and the form was just right for those insights to regis-
ter. The tone, however, was a mite off-putting: lacked a
certain sensitivity to the audience (e.g., me), and was
imbued with some unnecessary overstatement. These are spe-
cifics, moving thru: right off, the personal-ness of the
approach is not acknowledged, though I’m sure that’s the
intent. The line between “this is how I see it” and “THIS
IS IT” blurs. Also, too much insularity -- from being on
the outside. Or rooted in a particular aesthetic. Seems
pushed, not a gesture toward persuasion. And the “pushed”
quality is I think a definite criticism. Lines atop p. 5
unclear, also the unargued Stein reference on that page.
On “truth” on p. 6: needs Habermas; otherwise, the reli-
ance on Kuhn is still prior to the revisions, criticisms,
and extensions of his (now 15 years old) ideas, and thus
dated. Pre-­
Feyerabend, for ex. This lack of qualification
seems a severe problem elsewhere, maybe a personal thing.
Not the bluntness of negative polemic this time, but of
overstated and ex cathedra remarks. Same problem with a
possibly undue reliance on Wallerstein, before assimilat-
ing the critiques & qualifications. Stuff on Olson, p. 9,
great. (Mayer reference unclear.) Pp. 10 & 11 are beauts,
but the distinction between signifieds and referents,
which is key, must be spelled out further for full effect.
Reference to Duncan on p. 13 shows an insularity (i.e.,
“my experience” somehow EQUALS “literary history”) and a
turning-inward that detract. Matrix theory on p. 13 bottom
too reductive. Pp. 14, 15, fine. P. 16, too complacent on
Kuhn. Matrix theory beginning to seem once again limited
and reductive, determinative, and anti-phenomenological.
“arrogance: the rambunctious glee of the self-appointed”:
284  The Language Letters

is that present here as well? Narrow focus on literary

history, a kind of idiosyncratic totalizing. Again, p. 20
-- overstated Kuhnism. Great stuff in these pages, 18, 19,
20, 21, 22. Paragraph after Olson quote on p. 22 needs
elaboration. P. 24, nonreferential formalism left unde-
fined, to your detriment. Does it have anything centrally
to do with “I HATE SPEECH.” If so, what. Needs defining for
p. 25 to be of use. P. 26, dating, an emphasis on Grenier
and THIS seems to reify a much more complex historical pro-
cess -- which you may, of course, realize but by failing
to acknowledge it, it undoes the power of the essay. Sim-
ilar with “Disappearance.” Reference to Coolidge, p. 26,
both shrill and unclear. The importance of Grenier and THIS
to you, and their historical importance for other reasons,
tend to get implicitly, behaviorally (and disclaimers of
intent are not the point) identified. Thus, reification out
of insularity, or . . . .

End of p. 27 unclear. The “bibliography” on p. 30 is once

again a reification and a historical oversimplification
of the kind that does more harm than good. Only two writ-
ers????? Any critical comments on Grenier’s inability to
get beyond the sadly undefined nonref. form. ain’t enough
reason to denigrate [BA annotates: or if denigrate is too
strong: ignore] the other workers in this -- undefined --
terrain. Your jab at experimentalism on p. 31 needs elab-
oration badly. As does the reference to “L-C activity”
bottom p. 31. This need becomes blatant in the outrageous
(to me) listing on p. 32, where the idea of Grenier and
Coolidge as “vortex” brutally misreads a very complex set
of influences operating in the last 10 years, perhaps in
a way that simply projects and generalizes your own edu-
cation. But to lump these others (I consider my own name
used in that context such an incredible misreading of my
own history and education, coming from someone who should
know better, as a virtual insult) . . . DiPalma and Bern­
stein deriving from GRENIER???? [BA annotates: Or even,
narrowly, from Coolidge?] Dreyer, Hejinian, McCaffery
coming from a significant sharing of this artificial two
 The Language Letters 285

man matrix??? (I mean, Lynne has never read either, or

sure hadn’t when she evolved her style, etc.). Tossing
NY School-partly-derived-writers like Berkson or Green-
wald into this soup. Bromige here, why? Mayer, how so? And
then elevating others with very unclear logic (DeJasu?
Korzeniowsky? Taggart in wrong group, Freilicher? Sond-
heim???). “Partial, Partisan, & Incomplete” is not the
defense, for the whole notion of such a compressed and
stretched strained compartmentalization does great harm;
is “wrong.” P. 33 is suspiciously a description of your
own project for my taste -- how does “endless repetition
of art objects” differ from “art object made long by end-
less internal repetition”? Your comments on p. 33 apply
much better to your own work than to DECAY, it seems, and
the ingrown tie to THIS symptomanic (??) of this histori-
cal artifice.

I’m worn out. And, as I guessed, this became an irritated

letter. Maybe now that it’s out of my system, and a vaca-
tion beckons, I can get back on a more even keel and begin
to revitalize our relationship. I’ve missed a softer more
supportive interchange with you a lot, and a more frequent
one (my fault entirely). Oh, in all this bristly negativ-
ism I forgot: the piece on Ray was lovely and astute (tho
I didn’t agree with your criticisms).

Much love, in a rough time for me

Bruce

————

53. Charles Bernstein to Bruce Andrews (8/25/77)

Bruce,

whooosh: back today from a one day 3½ hr each way drive up

to Montreal to see some churches, some bldgs, the ambi-
ence, gd food; strange to be able to swoop up to another
286  The Language Letters

country, everyone spng french up there, & then be back,

all over the same day, too fast. & there be yr letter, so
i figuh better writ back or else there’ll be no pt.

yr vacation seems a bit more energetic than ours: we

more laying back, fighting agst the, quite considerable,
cold, what with no heat & gaping (but at who?) holes in
the wall. by now finally getting into the swing (or per-
haps better to say non-swing) having unplugged from my
usual image feeders -- a person cld become a new person,
i think, probably be better for it, things seem to come
in one by one & you can keep track, all that stuff. got
my Derrida, & abt 40 other bks, plus numerous ones i’ve
bought here for dimes & quarters, but, i’ll never finish
such piles, a friend used to make a distinction between
bks you’d like to read and bks you’d like to have read,
anyway, havent opened the new french master but find
strangely bks imposing themselves on me that i had no
intention of rdng -- e.g., the wonderful Last Post of F M
Ford, & this morning just finished, far stranger, Bellow’s
To Jerusalem & Back, wch, for a bk so filled with Commen-
tary views, i very much liked, on account of the man him-
self, his seriousness, & his wrtng.

Ron told me he had written you & that i shld take a look
at the letter(s). i feel most vague right now abt the
distributing srvc -- has Ron given you a rprt on his
efforts on that? i did write him a response to his let-
ter to you re new mss. by BW, BP, &c., but he hasnt com-
mented on that part of the letter, so i’m wondering how
thats shaping up. Ron seemed terribly unhappy abt having
Steve do the piece on him -- i think hes overestimat-
ing the need to get THE view of his wrk, wch for him wld
mean by you, me, Barry, or maybe Rae or Ray (he sd). but
i am willing, as i told him, to change choices on that
one if he’d prefer -- why not make him happy, esp. as
he really feels Steve doesnt know his wrk. Steve is set
to write on Palmer & in part on Mac Low -- we cld save
his piece on Ron for a later issue (-- you were to write
 The Language Letters 287

Steve). he also mentioned Antin -- & i think we shld doc-

ument Antin’s wrk: since Ron has just done a close rdng
of Tlkng i think we shld run a review by him on it, a
summary/biblio of hs wrks, prhps skipping the self-com-
ment here as i have recently asked him for a piece on
Rothenberg’s anthologies & we shld wait to see what he
says on that. i already wrote Big Ted Berrigan, wch of
course was a perverse choice -- we’ll wait to see what
hes gotta say. the Waldrops -- hm, makes me feel a soft
spot in my hardnosedness, i’ve got Keith’s collected,
unread, with me & have really read their wrks only spot-
tily -- liked Words Worth Less & some other pieces, but
really dont know their wrk -- was relying, & i shldnt,
on other opinions, &c. i did write them already, wch is
fine, they shld be involved -- but i dont see every per-
son we do a three part treatment on being thought of as
part of some kind of Pantheon -- i like the idea of hav-
ing Th A Clarke & CC both given the treatment in an issue
-- but of course different kinds of things will be sd abt
them, & Clarke will prob only be mentioned that once, CC
in numerous issues. as to length of pieces being 2-500
wrds, the more i think about it the less i like it -- &
the more necessary it seems if we’re to get the thing
actually done. we’ve partly got to think of this thing as
a catalogue of whats what. tho, we shld also be readily
open to the serious longer wrk that comes our way.

you say Watten has agreed to write on Grenier -- i had

been assigned to write him but i did so only recently so
i am confused on this. did you write Raworth -- i did as
well (it was on my original “task” list), asking him for a
piece on himself. i didnt mention Faville to him. i hope
we are not double wrtng people out of confusion. you say
you wrote to Melnick, wch was also on my “task” list, tho
i hadnt gotton to it yet, so will hold off on that until i
get it straight. i’ve written to Greenwald, Watten, Ber-
rigan, Berkson, Lally, Silliman (on Melnick, evidently
another doubling), Raworth, the Waldrops, Antin, Ensslin,
Seaton, Armantrout (tho yr to back up on this asking for a
288  The Language Letters

piece on Hejinian), Friedman, Sherry, Davies, Inman & Dar-

ragh, Kabza, Perlman, Blaser, Swanson . . . & am complet-
ing the rest now.

backups a fine idea & yr choices are all appropriate.

Ray did agree to do a piece on the Waldrops & i think
hes a gd choice, i also told them he was doing it, etc.
Baracks is a big Q in my mind as sole writer on Jack-
son -- i say question since its possible she can do it,
but i’m not sure. i’d like to see her “write” the bib-
lio & use an excerpt from Steve. Ron Johnson on Raworth
is fine: i know nothing abt Faville, ’cept he got good
taste, at times, in the pblshng field, so at this pt, if
Ron disputes, i’d say skip him on this, ask for a review.
as i say, i wrote Antin [CB annotates: on the Rothen-
berg anthologies] rather than Acker -- she doesnt really
seem to me to have the perspective on this, here i think
we cld just do an unsigned collaborative review by us
(wch i just throw out: the idea of having some unsigned
pieces by either you or me or collabs). Perelman #2 on
Barry fine. lets stick with SM on Palmer -- i mentioned
this to Palmer, whose new bk i read in ms., the last two-
thirds of wch was really great -- so right away we got
the opportunity of another piece, i.e., review, on him.
the ball with Ron is in his crt -- i’ve offered to let
him choose -- if nothing wrks out then i’ll do it. Warsh
on Mayer is more perverse, from our pt of view, than even
Ted B. i’d rather at least see Hannah do the thing on
her, as in the spirit, than Barbara or Michael or even
CC. Peter wldnt do it, he’d be ideal. & i wldnt ask her
either: she’d prob suggest Bob Rosenthal. lets not get
into that. i’ll think abt it: if Berrigan did agree, then
we’ll even be more pressed to get a review of her wrk to
give a different perspective. i’ve asked Palmer on CC &
am hoping: remember we got the whole CC symposium with
most of us in it (wch Ron says he may be forced to put
out himself) -- i’m not so keen on Perelman or Bromidge
as i’ve never seen their wrk of this type, rather see Bob
on Eigner or Watten, but. . . . ZO: thats that.
 The Language Letters 289

we’ll be back somewhere during the week of the Sept 5th

[CB annotates: so dont write me unless right away before
Aug 31]. Charlie and Gale are gettin married -- hes
invited Susan & i, you and Ellen, & Michael of those we
know. its beyond Hartford -- over 2 hrs. we’ll be driving
up. & spkng of weddings, with an eye to knowing each other
now just abt 10 yrs, Susan and i got married by the JP/
town clerk of Lyme, NH, a very fine young woman who sd she
didnt like speeches &c. -- the whole thing took about 45
seconds -- & liked very much that Susan wasnt changing her
name.

hello to Ellen (did write abt that job as grp leader, wch
hope works out).

see you soon --

love,

Charles

here’s a country style recipe Susan wanted to share with

you & Ellen --

Quarter: A calf head.

Clean teeth with a stiff brush, remove ears, brains, eyes,

snout, and most of the fat. Soak the quarters for 6 hours
in cold water to extract blood. Cover with cold water.
Add: 2 onions, 5 celery stalks.

Simmer until the meat is ready to fall from bones -- 3 hrs.

Drain but reserve stock. Chip meat off bones. Dice it.
Cover with stock. Reserve brains. Add spices.

Cook for 1/2 hr. Pour into mold and cover with cloth.

Put weight on top. Chill. Serve, cut into slices, with

290  The Language Letters

vinaigrette sauce to which you have added the diced cooked

brains.

Serves four.

(With something like this, who needs socialism? Anyway,

you can see we’re livin’ off the fat of the land out here.

————

54. Charles Bernstein to Lyn Hejinian (8/26/77)

Lyn,

Wrote you -- not too long ago -- at your Willets address,

wch I hope got to you. I remember ordering $6 of your
books, but now can’t see the check record, so wonder if I
did, in fact, send the $ -- let me know if I didn’t.

But all that’s beside the point of this writing. I want

to invite your participation in a project Bruce Andrews &
I are currently planning. We are going to do a newsletter
wch will bring attention to a variety of poets & poetry
-- & more than attention: specific information on where
to get it, how much, &c. Partly this will be done through
bibliographies & essays on people like Mayer, Greenwald,
Coolidge, Raworth, Palmer, &c. Primary, tho, we want to
publish short (200-500 words as a general rule -- longer
in the case of special projects or texts) reviews/texts/
responses/comments -- I hesitate to leave it at “review”
because I feel very open about the form -- certainly the
texture of much of the work I’ve seen by you (e.g. the
piece in Telephone or The Bride . . .) is right on what
I’m looking for -- i.e., not necessarily, or exclusively,
expository, descriptive, or evaluative.

Some books you might want to write on, I thought, prhps:

Dick Higgins’ new Classic Plays; Acker’s Childlike Life,
wch has yet to get a good review of what it’s doing;
 The Language Letters 291

Perelman, Robinson, [John] Thorpe, [Anthony] Barnett,

[Merrill] Gilfillan, [Alison] Knowles: new books. OR: what
do you want to deal with -- other poets, perhaps related
non-fiction, or perhaps a short “essay” like piece with
its own center. In any case, let me know what you think --
& -- soon -- what you’d like to do, so I can try to keep
some order in this process. A list of books that should be
“reviewed” & a list of possible writers for us would also
be much appreciated.

Be in touch. Am just now ending a great vacation in Ver-

mont.

Best,
Charles

————

55. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman (8/29/77)

Dear Ron,

Your giant letters were the crux of the vacation in Massa-

chusetts wch was given over to enjoyments and relaxation,
also to writing a scad of short letters about the news-
letter (conceivable title, Language), & getting back into
work on my Vietnam book. Geez, I WAS harried before, and
I’m harried again, but better energy. Ellen and I back in
wild romantic working order. School about to begin, Wed. I
leave for a week in DC (convention/friends/mother).

Just will read yr 2 letters again as I type and make random

riffs. Yep, Braverman -- want to design a course with that.

Newsletter -- pleased you will do the piece on Melnick.

Also, was this clear, we are soliciting each of the fea-
tured writers to do a text of the same size on themselves:
200-600 words. So, that would give you another forum. Want
that very much. That okay?
292  The Language Letters

Antin not in the 17 since I

at least have severe doubts about his work -- we’d rather
just have him write on JR’s anthols and have a review of
his new one: Charles mentions in his today’s letter that
you either had something on that book already or would
be perfect to do it. Given the 2 tasks above, on RS and
DM, would you also want to write a piece on Antin’s Blab
at Bounds?55 If so, great by me. Another possibility: to
run the paragraph or so in your letter to Korzeniowsky as
“review” of her book?56 (I heard from somewhere there was
a beautiful compacted take on that in a letter of yours,
tho not heard this from hoss’ mit).

Your ideas for backups all very helpful. Changes so far:

Coolidge nixed on Watten, so asked Perelman. Others still
hold, as is (even perverse ones like Berrigan & Faville).
Accepted: you on DM, Barry on RGr, Lally on Dreyer, Steve
on Palmer we have excerptable, Ray on Keith at least --
may slide Rosmarie to side, waiting on others. For ex., no
word from Steve on idea of his doing piece on you. Again,
I DON’T think this is a bad idea, given the setting and
the brevity. A full catalogic document on you (by me or
Charles, yes) will come, but should be in a mag with real
size and clout and a longer piece to boot. This ain’t
intended to be THE text, somehow pinning it like a butter-
fly. (Parenthetically, if Steve doesn’t have the published
work, or enuf of it to write a 3-600 word piece to GROUND
his theorizing -- which he can ground, as his pieces in OL
on Palm[er] show even if his one on Markey do[es] not --
then, bigod, he should have those works, at least by loan,
for the merest sake of literary integrity and the future
of the species, no? In any case, I will await his reply
-- I’ve asked Rae if she would hypothetically consent,

55. David Antin, Talking at the Boundaries (New York: New Directions), 1976. Reprinted
in How Long Is the Present: Selected Talk Poems of David Antin, ed. Stephen Fredman (Albu-
querque: University of New Mexico Press, 2014).
56. An excerpt from Silliman’s letter to Korzeniowsky of March 8, 1977, appeared as a
review in L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E 2 (April 1978).
 The Language Letters 293

and if Steve says nix or is hesitant, then I’ll ask Rae.

Charles and I want to hold off our own reviewing as much
as possible, and in large measure to put it elsewhere: not
use this as our personal stage, except as directors not
actors.

(Ray, by way, had same beef about Greenwald on him --

which has not yet been accepted either -- feeling that Ted
did not know all the books, etc., and wanted Charles or me
or you: again, felt that he had in back of his mind some
idea of the “definitive” which I want to GET AWAY FROM.)

All your other suggestions have been taken with the

utmost of care, and comprise in large measure our backup
list. But I feel that for the 2 of us, huddling, without
approval from the SanFran alter id, Ron (“Bella Bakunin”)
Silliman, beforehand, that we did . . . pretty good.

Berrigan, by the bye, is at least a link with Kulchur, if

not with culture. We shall see: more news on this as it
cracks.

I’ve writ to all the younger folk (les jeunes) on yr list.

I am deeply grateful. We want this net as wide as possi-
ble. So (wondering if you have one of my semi-std. 1½ page
intro informative notes about this newsletter),57 anyone
outside of town you want to tell about it, fine. As long
as they know it’s not guaranteed solicitation.

On distribution service: have you written to the people I

asked you to? This was Silliman, Coolidge, Grenier, Wal-
drops, McCaffery, Raworth. Charles is writing Mayer-Palmer-­
Baracks-DiPalma-Mac Low-Greenwald. We need a list of titles
and a camera ready copy. What’s the story. I mean, Charles
wrote asking what happened with you and I couldn’t say.
I definitely would like to wait until our second listing

57. The notification flyer for the newsletter is reprinted as a preface to this volume.
294  The Language Letters

before we start messing with new mss. by newer writers

(Perelman, Robinson, Davies, etc.); remember, Ron, we’ve
got to do all this legwork here getting the copies out
and would like to start somewhere, not shoot for the moon
straight off. There will be an expanded list (and I figure
by that time some of those mss. of the contemporaries will
have found print). I don’t want to wait on starting on this
until you wear us down with wanting to include more head-
aches than we need to handle. Without Excedrin.

Discussion of the other issues in my long letter I’m too

buzzed with heat and hayfever to tackle. But, say more
about what you see as decentralization in my work. Your
whole perspective on the pressures and reluctances oper-
ating on us in the mail and LEGEND seem to the punt.
And subtlely thot. Cuz I sure don’t want that emotional
screwup level of things to botch anything, and I do see
so many others letting it happen (Barry, Barbara, Ray,
Bernadette, Faville, etc.). Yet even so, in your rendi-
tion of how well you understand where a negative reaction
comes from in regard to the rubricizing treatment at end
of HORIZON and occasionally throughout, you manage to come
out without need of change. Since you say you are going to
revise it, then I feel my suggestions will be taken into
whatever account seems right. GOOD.

Shit, getting late (11:11pm).

Barry clarified his wait on SONNETS -- has to do with $ &

negotiations over Grenier, and I think a ms. by Greenwald
that has caught his eye. I don’t personally feel there is
any real comparison any longer with the likes of Green-
wald, but many differ. So, we shall see.

Other books may trickle out: mss. out, all shorter. Am

going to plan a “collection,” incorporating part of the T
issue, titled FUNNELS IN. Variable length, depending on
what seems possible. 60, 80 pages? First such since EDGE,
yr kind words concerning well heard this end.
 The Language Letters 295

DIS #8: liked yr comments, could talk endlessly about

just about every mag issue and book in our respective
apartments, GOD DAM IT. I mean I miss you something
fierce. And know, deep down, and in an improprietous
piece of highfalutin verbiage, that we are really the
only two of this entire generation, even if it might not
always seem that way to you from “the mail,” and that we
are separated by too dratted much land for the thinking
work that needs to be done. For me, at least, letters
cannot do it.

Interested to hear what you did think of Seaton & Coolidge

therein. And why you found substance in Lyn H-indian.

Letter from Curtis in which he refers to “regionalism”

in a way that located you for him -- thought of this in
your reference to a “typical NY stance.” There is no such
animule. Charles & I disagree and agree incessantly, and
there’s no one else: Seaton a loner, and Greenwald not
really open to me. Never talked with either at length
about writing. There is a NY stance, but it’s the post
O’Hara-Notley gang, and a small post-Ashes grouplet,
that’s all. There is more of a SF sense, or at least some
such looks that way in This & Hills. [BA annotates: will
go into detail in reply to your detail.] (What you think
of Hills new one? -- me=very critical, colonel-ly; liked
Ray & Watten most.)

On LEGEND: you refer to “FLUKE JoY” and ask for another

go-round??? Wait a minim, that’s already in ROOF, along
with our duet. [BA annotates: did we forget to tell you??]
I was quibbling about the trio with Ray. Do you want me
to go back over that, or do you want to do something to
de-regularize or de-mechanize the “internal margin.”
Either way.

On 2197: too buzzed for specifics, but if you think my

reading is a reading of the structure rather than a read-
ing of the words, you are close to seeing a flaw there
296  The Language Letters

of which you’ve been insuff. aware: wch is that the work

invites such a reading. The “words” are there for you for
that is, sure, the speed of writing. But the order of dis-
closure is the order of apprehension, and the structure is
much less recessive than you think (or less than it is for
you), and the words less potent. Anyhow, all the things
you say are of keen interest.

Also, since the “structuralist” tendency in the art world

is so pronounced in NY (and some, like me, are rather
indifferent to it), there may be some difference like the
one you mention in reading styles betw the 2 cities -- SF,
the “words” (which does come from Grenier, say) and NY,
the “pattern” (I mean, could you imagine Mac Low or Mayer
out there, originating there?).

Anyhow, as your comments and mine prior, on 2197, indi-

cate, we are at opposite ends of the pole in terms of
our sensibilities. Sure, Steve Reich, Albers, Stella, as
signals of that. All the specifics you mention are well
noted, and my “criticisms” then become, and rightly so, in
part just comments on “why I’d never do it that way.” As
are your comments, or many of them, on mixed comp. strat-
egies, microsolutions, object-making, etc. Only in HORI-
ZON, and in my letter, it seems we are both too intent on
denying the real personalism of those respective stances
and differences. Ole male desire to be evaluative, or to
criticize what we don’t desire, as tho that were the pt.
HORIZON did seem more prescriptive than you admit, though
the SF people may not see it since they saw the origins in
process. Yes, the writ form does require adjustments to
give a more appropriate TONE.

Specifics. Looking only at yr letter: “unclear” can be

what you mean by “cryptic.” P. 5. Habermas: read intro to
Theory and Praxis, and McCarthy article cited there; also
1st 100 or so pages of Legit Crisis. That, as start. Fuck
the quick dismissals. On Kuhn, see the Lakatos & Musgrave
anthology, in good libe, or Feyerabend’s recent Against
 The Language Letters 297

Method, which New Left Books just put out. Yes, expand
section on sigs & refs. On Duncan: don’t let that whole
notion of personal symbolism get you carried away (Barry
mentioned this in a letter); why those lines of his, and
not Ashes’ Europe several years before, say (not that
there aren’t reasons, but the folks you mention are Cali-
fornia or from the same Caterpillar crucible you emerged
from; there are lots of other routes). “Anti-phenomeno-
logical” is fairly straight. See any std. critique of
deductive theory or explanation. Peter Winch, say. Or Rad-
nitzsky. About one million works.

“Kuhnism” I mean as though his ideas could be summarily

applied everywhere, which was once in vogue (5-10 years
ago) in each field, and then riddled full of holes. See
recent Diacritics, for lit crit example. Or MLN.

Why does repetition strike you “as the fundamental formal

gesture.” Prescriptive? Why the sentence “the fundamental
contentual unit.” Answers to these two questions may gloss
the whole difference between us???

On my work, what mean by the poems “rest in and of them-

selves without becoming anything larger save by accre-
tion.” Expliquer, s.v.p. (Can “larger” poems become
lessened in their force, parallel fashion, by the flat-
tening via repetition, and if so, what is “larger” a
solution to?)

Well, out of steam (midnite). Much love, and you’ve given

me, as a token of that, much passionate thinking.

Love,

Bruce

————
298  The Language Letters

56. Ron Silliman to Charles Bernstein (8/31/77)

Dear Charles,

Cecil Taylor’s Indent on the stereo, just back from den-

tist (my mouth feels like it’s been rolfed), figure it
makes best sense to send this to NYC to greet you on yr
return, rather than risk missing you in Fairlee (llookks
like a right quiet lil town there on that card) --

answers
to yr questions -- Yes, taking the “Taste” does not effect
yr other work (the collab) wch will also be in Tottel’s --
it’s gonna be a dynamite # --

no idee for name of distrib

svc (Routes is the only thing floating in head here at all)
-- have done a little talking (w/ Watten, & sent Melnick,
who i’ve not seen in a month, a letter abt Pcoet) --

i dont
see exactly how an excerpting of Taggart’s LZ wld work,
it’s an idea at odds w/ the structure of the disserta-
tion -- i’ve been on him to think abt a rewrite w/ an eye
toward publishing, wch might make it much more appropriate
for such treatment -- besides, if anyone shld condense his
work for pub., it shld be him, not me (even tho we’d do it
differently) --

Kit is at 341 San Jose, SF 94110 (upstairs

from Alan Bernheimer, literally, who’s at 337) -- Kit gave
a great reading w/ Bob Perelman the other day, by far his
best & sounded as tho there is much forward movement in
his work these days (vonderful!) --

there’s already a journal calld Language, it wld be a

headfirst dive into a lawsuit to call it that --

a piece on Antin’s talking work might be interesting, yes --

 The Language Letters 299

am not sure what i didnt respond to in the long letter,

thot i coverd it pretty much (?) --

met Harry Lewis last night (at his reading & party there-
after), an engaging but highly limited man -- what becomes
of Blackburn’s program all too quickly --

Bromige has done an 11 page (dble space, w/ lots of mar-

gin, so wld single space to 6 at most) essay calld “My
Poetry” wch is most interesting/useful -- you’d do well to
ask him for it for the newsletter --

may have sd this already, but it may be that the newslet-

ter shld NOT have a name, that that may be truly its cor-
rect name (for now) -- if you just let it ride thus a few
issues a name is certain to attach itself --

feel as tho my brain-energy is low today (not much sleep,

slight hangover, then in dentist’s chair from 9:30 to
noon), so will hang up here.

love,

Ron

————

57. Lyn Hejinian to Charles Bernstein (8/31/77)

Dear Charles,

Thanks very much for your letter. I’d like very much to
write something for the “newsletter.” No one could be more
enthusiastic than I, having arrived from isolation into what
constitutes the “scene” -- i.e., the whole world -- here,
language-centered (which term is bandied about, though Barry
Watten, probably rightfully, says that’s a shuck).

So, sitting in a back corner with Rae Armantrout and Bob

300  The Language Letters

Perelman last night at a tedious poetry reading, I thought

about what I might write for your project. I shy away from
doing a “review,” conventional or otherwise. I did a lot
of reviewing a few years ago, for money (very little), and
came to hate the form. I know that, strictly speaking,
that is not what you would want -- a conventional review.
But just now I don’t much feel like doing even an uncon-
ventional one.

As an aside, too, I suspect that my admirations, just now,

are too enthusiastic -- as I come to make friends with
these people. I’ve none of the distance yet that should be
necessary for an overview -- I’m forced to do, what I like
best in any case -- work from the interior.

The new work I’ve been doing is a progression from those

pieces of mine that you mention liking, essay distortions.
I seem to be sufficiently obsessed with language to end up
writing about it in one way or another -- maybe something
like that would be o.k.? I think that is what I’d like to
send you -- probably a piece called IF WRITTEN IS WRITING,
which is underway. I will be sure to keep to your 1,200-
1,500 word limit. Could you tell me what your deadline is?

It sounds as if your stay in Vermont was wonderful. I find

that I like Berkeley but am occasionally homesick for the
country. I wonder if that life is entirely in the past now
-- certainly I feel that the writing that came from there
is out-of-date. My “old” stuff always seems so, however
-- which is why one continues, renews the attack, or what-
ever.

Thanks again, and very best,

Lyn

————
 The Language Letters 301

58. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews (9/4/77)

Dear Bruce,

“These letters are tonic” -- Ted Enslin (in another con-

text, but yes, the pt it takes is well posed, the wealth
of ideas in yrs of the 29th are a drug in the mind-­
expanding sense of that term) -- reading something of
that order leaves me w/ 100 ideas refracting off each
sentence & a lot of thot moves forward that way, before
one scarcely notices it -- i too miss the fact that we
cant talk all these things out each week, tho often mail
improves that sort of dialog (it depends on the individ-
ual: Watten & i have often servd that function for each
other, in the periods in wch we’re speaking anyway, yet
i suspect that it wld be easier w/, say, Palmer, to be a
correspondent as one cant wrangle ideas out verbally w/
his strongly defensive personal presence & ditto Coolidge;
Perelman and Hejinian love such talking & their presence
in town does much to aid me (as, increasingly, Bromige’s
openness to just this has also)) -- i may yet do a phone
credit card # & give you a long chat via that -- & yes, in
a way we are the 2 & LEGEND is doing/has done so much to
bring a million issues to the table -- i suspect that that
work will prove a watershed for the 5 of us, we’re all
going to be infinitely better writers for the fact of it,
as there we’ve begun to deal w/ the sill-unspoken issues
in our work in basic ways for the 1st time (tho we’re cer-
tainly not the only 2 writers, nor the Big Ones as Olson
wld say -- of those precisely in our generation Watten is
(for me at least) also one whose very presence demands
that fundamental response --

if i cld get to you (cant

suggest footing the bill for it until i get a job, but
if it shld come to that, we’ll do it then) get Fordham’s
xerox machine to make a COMPLEAT set of your Songs for
me?? it wld be much appreciated --
302  The Language Letters

ok, that as preface, i want to go down yr let-

ter as a raft wld a river --

i am aware of the piece on

myself & have not at this pt (have a draft of a piece on
DM already, plus a basically complete biblio wch i’ll go
over w/ him soon) (the biblio aint long) figurd out just
what to say but imagine that i’ll jot something down while
(the project for the next 12 wks) redoing the “Horizon” --
tho i think i may want to handle the biblio on myself (is
that too to be part of the newsletter?) in a way wch may
look idiosyncratic but wch is more true to the work than
to just the haphazard narrative of publications --

of
Antin -- i’m surprised somewhat at yr reticence there -- he
seems to me to be a clearly key figure of his generation
(certainly more so to my mind than the Waldrops or Rothen-
berg) & the talking pieces raise almost all of the issues
wch concern us, tho from a very different angle than you
or i wld see it from (i’m hoping to get him to give a talk
here in SF at Bob’s loft, in order to play w/ his form in
ways wch i think it calls for -- e.g., interruption) -- i’d
be glad to do a piece on him (in a sense i’ve already done
it, in correspondence w/ him, but it wld be a way of con-
densing lots of basic issues usefully) --

i dont have a
copy of my letter to Carole K, tho do recall most of what
i wrote -- i dont know abt reprinting from my correspon-
dences (“Against Wisdom as Such” was a letter before it
was an essay, as Duncan notes) -- what i say to a writer
abt their work might not be what i’d say to the world at
large, but perhaps it wld be worth my looking over a pho-
tocopy 1st before coming to any conclusion one way or the
other --

heard that Perelman wld be the one writing on BW &

Rae tells me you’ve already written her abt me -- she sez
 The Language Letters 303

that she feels there’s just too much work for [her] to get
a handle on it briefly -- Watten askd me what i’d think
if he suggested to you being the one to write on my work,
& i’m not averse to that, tho i know where he & i differ
on key issues (e.g., he takes Ketjak as the basic work &
thinks the others -- dont know his opinion of 2197 -- are
intended to raise problems for readers, wch he sees as not
what one shld be doing, but that’s his object orientation
talkin) -- let me know what Steve sez (& i agree, he shld
see the work (natch!) & how all of that progresses) --

i
think you & Charles both ought to get involvd in some of
the pieces -- the pt is not that of being editorial stars
or being oppressively omnipresent in yr own mag (for, as
Eshelman has shown, that too can serve a purpose, even
if it aint yr own), but that these are issues wch shld
be talkd abt & both of you do have informd primary ideas
on lots of the questions before us -- we shld not be so
deprived --

my piece in La-Bas on Marquee outlines i think

my overview of Ray’s work -- it wldnt be that useful to do
it again, tho if it becomes a problem for you or Charles
i’d have no major objection to being the “fireman” at the
scene --

on the ? of definitiveness wch you say you want

to GET AWAY FROM (abstractly a good goal) -- i suspect
that the form of the newsletter as currently proposed: 2
very short compact statements + bibio, forces the issue
in just the opposite direction -- even if you want to get
away from it, it wont be how others read it (&, after the
responses to the “Horizon,” i’m maybe hypersensitive to
that distinction) -- it will be used as such. the format
of Vort or the Margins symposiums is much better able to
get away from being definitive because they allow for many
differing viewpts -- but these 200 word deals are all but
the lettering on our tombstones whether we like it or not
304  The Language Letters

(& that’s why, at least partly, i responded to the idea of

Steve defensively as i did) --

on the Berrigan-Kulchur
connection, that might seem more crucial to me if i had
arisen w/in the NY matrix, or earlier than i did (& yr
right to note the role Caterpillar playd for me, tho my
library has only 1 issue, a contrib copy at that, remain-
ing -- the other mag, even earlier on, wch servd that kind
of defining presence was Coyote’s Journal) -- but, From
Here, it seems like an oblique approach to take -- Berna-
dette’s work in particular is one wch i wld like/cld use a
good critical insight into -- straddling as it does both
writing scene & conceptualist concerns & in the all too
obviously intentional lack of any critical statements by
her, it seems to me to raise lots of issues wch it doesnt
necessarily resolve (e.g., the really tacky ending to
Studying Hunger fails to bring that piece to a decent clo-
sure) -- i’m not at all certain that Berrigan (who Watten
trusts lots more than i do) is going to shed light on any
of those areas, for they’re not those he’s normally con-
cernd w/ -- my feeling on this one is to wait & see, but
w/o much excitement in the anticipation (why not Lazarchuk
on Andrews, etc.?) --

no, i dont have the standardized 1½

page note on the newsletter, didnt even know there was one
-- wld be interested to see it, tho --

have told Charles by

the way that the presence of one mag already calld Lan-
guage pre-empts that title -- i wldnt be at all surprised,
by the way, if those guys wldnt sue over it either --

on
titles, the only additional thots i’ve had are these:
1st, from Levi-Strauss’s work on the origin of writing in
oral cultures: A Writing Lesson (& the “A” keeps it from
 The Language Letters 305

sounding too prescriptive) & the other idea from the idi-
oms wch surround us all: It Goes Without Saying --

i’ve not
done the work as yet w/ the distribution svc, but will do
so in the ensuing wks (by the way, the original list i had
from Charles included Watten & Melnick on top of yr own
mentiond in this letter) -- yr right no doubt abt start-
ing w/ something wch is realizable in the short run, rather
than going for broke from the outset -- you & Charles both
being outa NYC for a month put a brake on my work at that,
as i’d felt beforehand that things werent quite at the
gathering stage, tho the mail during yr “vacation” (& svl
letters from CB during that time, maybe twice a wk) have
moved the process forward considerably --

on my not verbally
(or letterally) conceding my own pts to change, vis a vis
the bristling about Legend & the “Horizon” etc., i confess
i’m not as good abt saying such things as doing them (old
macho hangup perhaps -- something wch Peggy cld certainly
[add] lots of additional commentary to) -- well, i do rec-
ognize these things, or try to -- the really odd thing abt
the “Horizon” in particular was not so much the responses
as the grouping of them, wch quickly became predictable in
ways i had not at all foreseen --

i hope Funnels In finds

a good publisher & not too long from now -- also that BW
can get to Sonnets (all his projects seem right now hanging
on the $ thing, & will probably not be resolvd until after
his trip east to visit Eigner) -- it’s been good to see
him taking you as seriously as he ought to (& as he hasnt
always wanted to do) -- by the way, he’s wrong abt me when
he says i think the Authors are in Eternity58 (misreads the

58. The relevant line is from William Blake to Thomas Butts (July 6, 1803) in The Letters
of William Blake, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (New York: Macmillan, 1956). See also Robert Dun-
can, “Two Dicta of William Blake: Variations,” Poetry 99, no. 3 (1961): 172–77.
306  The Language Letters

matrix, or my meaning thereof) -- but i do think we each

live in landscapes peopled w/ our experience --

on This 8, i
thot that Seaton’s work (i’ve read better in Slit Wrist)
had a unifying tone wch held it together, one whose cold-
ness extends from the art-language scene -- it wasnt that
interesting to me --

Coolidge’s work there (& in the long

poem in general) i like, tho i think he’s appropriating
more of the formal solutions to Finnegans Wake than he
knows & in that sense it’s limiting -- what is clear is
that where he began (Space & The Maintains) treating lan-
guage as light & working from a wave theory thereof (as
compared to Grenier’s corpuscular one), he’s moved a long
way toward a photon one (it exhibits characteristics of
a wave & a particle at different pts). its tone, above
all else, holds it together & at all pts the language is
constantly turning on degrees of referentiality in ways
wch i find interesting (& i think the issue of tone is
one wch is just beginning to assert itself w/ the various
language-­
centerd writers, w/ Perelman probably the most
conscious practitioner at that level) -- it’s a huge step
in some direction for CC, but may yet prove a dead end for
him -- his roots in Burroughs and Kerouac show themselves
increasingly clearly i think --

i like Lyn’s sense of ref-

erence a lot, tho, like Duncan (a key figure for her, as
is Ponge &, worth noting here, RD is a key for me also,
tho FP is not, save for the notebook of the pine woods,59
it all seems a bit too sweet: each word at all pts means
not one thing (referentialism at its most pejorative) but
many, often conflicting --

59. Francis Ponge, “The Pine Woods Notebook,” in The Voice of Things, trans. Beth
Archer (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972). On the revised importance of the notebook for
him, see also Ron Silliman, Silliman’s Blog, May 31, 2003, [Link]
search?q=francis+ponge.
 The Language Letters 307

Hills is to me too loosely edited (Bob’s casu-

alness, wch is integral to his whole way in the world,
comes thru) -- i liked Barry’s work (may yet include a sec-
tion of City Fields in the next Tottel’s, as it wld fit),
liked Carla’s a lot as well (the man described there, by
the way, is BW), Ray’s, yrs, Eigner’s, Benson’s transla-
tions, Kit’s Pink Slip (wch is based on my Bart poem, wch
may prejudice me some), but Dave Morice? it’s just this
sort of personalism that i respond to negatively: still,
it is a good sampling of the current SF scene (probably the
best to date at that level) --

(& comparative responses:

Whalen taught This 8 at Naropa this summer, wch didnt
get that great a response in town, whereas the Ft. Mason
foundation decided to do a Hills reading based on that
mag). Perelman’s own selections in Hills just elude me
-- they’re nowhere near his best (& the Thorpe, Hollo,
& Woolf selections are real typical examples of who Bob
reads -- & Bromige in particular is a big influence for
Bob) --

on Legend & yr wanting to rethink the triad -- my

mistake (!) -- my folder is just too thick and i’m guilty
of trying to keep too many things in mind at once (old
jugglers’ problem) -- but my basic response to that (that
you shld have total permission to rework as you see nec-
essary & fit) remains -- these triads are tricky, proving
much trickier than dyads by a long shot -- “FLUKE JoY” &
the one w/ me/Steve/Ray being the only compleat ones to
date, by my count -- Steve, Charles, & i have been working
very slowly (but very consistently) on ours & i’ve been
glad to see how much better it’s been getting w/ all 3 of
us revising each other’s work (to the pt that it seems
almost impossible to tell who’s behind wch words, that we
have finally become thus invested in it at all pts) -- i
think, tho, that our differing formal sensibilities (abt
wch more below) is the key to yr response to my reordering
of “the sun is so it can be” --
308  The Language Letters

yr words on 2197 are well taken

& yr probably write (cldnt help that, oi) “in a sense”
(a qualifying term wch i have to make sure i dont use in
every sentence i write these days) -- i think that what
permits you that reading is just its “laidbackness” in
that it doesnt accumulate, or progress, but is equally
itself at all pts (wch is something i get, or take, or
steal, from Creeley, but try to apply very differently: i
wld, as i may have sd before, like that work to have been
like a large sphere in wch the whole was always present
& clear from each pt -- if it ever shld come out as a bk
(wch i’d like), it wld be one not to read thru from end to
end, but to open anywhere & read, then close & open else-
where (but how best to get that across? a problem i admit
to not solving) --

yr right on Grenier as origin of the

SF reading style (& Duncan also, tho not as many wld give
him credit), but i was thinking SF (me, BW, Bob, Rae,
Lyn, Palmer, Kit, Benson, Bromige) NY (you, Charles, Ray,
Acker, Mac Low (not Bernadette, who is these days an exam-
ple of the Berkshires & her poems in This 8, wch work from
ideas of CC’s, but his least useful ones & less usefully
used still by her -- “flatness & overallness” -- show that
sword cutting both ways)) -- Parsing, for example, and
Marquee are unimaginable as SF-based works, literally (yr
own work less so, i admit) -- & i expect that some aspects
of my own work (esp. those of The Chinese Notebook) wld
end up seeming more important, more apt to be stressd,
were i in that environment more than by mail --

on yr com-
ments on the “Horizon” -- one thing you do, wch i find
irritating, is to supplant a concrete statement w/ a
reference to a bk (e.g., Feyerabend, Habermas, etc.) --
admittedly, these names stand for many meanings & it’s
impossible to fully reduce them into x number of words
-- nevertheless, it wld be 10 times more useful for you
to note 1 hole in Kuhn (many are obvious, just reading
 The Language Letters 309

him) than it is to pt to MLN or Diacritics -- i’ve gotten

on Charles’ case abt this also, & he’s done a good job of
filling in blank spaces (on Jurgen H in particular) -- i
want, hopefully, not to base my ideas on Kuhn or anyone
else, but on the empirical evidence (& Kuhn does provide a
good shorthand for certain aspects of that realm, e.g., the
proliferation of Williams in the past 12 years) --

& i
agree that had my matrix been different it might have been
Ashes (or Burroughs or even Hart Crane, whose “Cape Hat-
teras” is the first really clear disjuncture of form &
content in the direction toward language-centerdness) &
not Duncan quoted -- RD, tho, will be even a larger figure
in the rewrite than in the 1st draft (as will Antin, Mac
Low, Rothenberg, Blackburn -- all these middle generation
people really reflect Shklovsky’s Knight’s Move theory in
very specific ways) --

repetition is the 1st gesture of

form, historically it immediately poses the questions
of before & after, of cumulation & presentness -- (&,
natch, i’m following Mallarme here who was 1st to note
its importance as such, wch all of the structuralists at
one time or another have paid their homage to) -- for
me it is the mode of extrinsic formality wch most imme-
diately poses the possibility of almost total intrinsic
form moving between the words (& by intrinsic form i mean
that sense of form wch is usually calld “organic” & in
our time has had most of its dimensions filld out, best
by Creeley, by projectivism’s approach to writing the
writing, Doug Woolf a great example (or Hannah Weiner)
or it being practicd in a more or less pure way) -- there
seem to me only 2 other possibilities of form besides
the extrinsic, wch cld empower a work of any size at all
(beyond 1 page, say): a narrative element (even if not
there in the referential level: a la Tender Buttons, or
Creeley’s Mabel) or a unifying tone (consistently yr own
solution!) -- i like the simplicity of repetition as a
310  The Language Letters

solution (it, for me, puts the extrinsic in its place, as

secondary consideration) (& it’s because i feel it is a
centrally important formal feature, i find its misuse, as
in the last page of Marquee, jarring) & i like the fact
that it enables me to “jumble” the tone a lot (& there’s
the RD influence for sure), wch i like to work w/ as a
variable element in my writing -- you arrive at tone thru a
variety of methods, partly thru the amt of space you leave
open on a page (a very crucial formal element for you, wch
i dont think anybody’s particularly noted in any of the
reviews of you i’ve seen), thru connotations, esp. second-
ary ones, thru some use of sound (in yr case, fricatives
most often show up) -- Tjanting uses repetition much the
way Ketjak did, tho in each paragraph there is an extended
section w/ no repetition (a Fibonacci system w/in the
larger one wch structures each paragraph) & the repeated
sentences are rewritten (a la 2197, tho not using elements
of other sentences) abt 80% of the time, so the total work
is moving in at least 3 directions “at once” --

the sen-
tence is what words are to a child first learning the lan-
guage -- & some language systems still have that sense of
it (Hopi, where verb function is a part of the nouns &,
as residue, in the Chinese as well) -- the Guslars, when
askd by Lord if they improvised their poems around the
formulaic use of words, didnt even know what that concept,
word, meant (“there are no words” is not a figurative
statement -- meaning, wch proceeds in sentences, precedes
any consciousness of wordness, wch comes from writing)
-- i am not a wordman as i’ve sd many a time -- but i may
well be a sentencer as my work since 1974 has consistently
taught me (the “line” is at best an artificial unit whose
long history has its origins in oral poetry & a dubious
enuf relationship to all print technology -- the “line”
proposes “high art” in a way i’m anxious to get out of my
work &, notably, has been taken over remarkably by dis-
play advertising these past several years -- so, for me,
it is not the word (too limited, as Grenier has shown
 The Language Letters 311

brilliantly, not all of the issues get raisd), nor line,

nor, certainly, plot/narrative/voice etc. -- if there’s
anything central to the 4 poems of the Age of Huts, it’s
the sentence as given (& Tjanting carries it a long way,
i think, beyond what those 4 poems do: i’m treating each
one the way a “structural” filmmaker (an unfortunate name,
tho all of them, from Snow & Kubelka down seem to use it)
treats a single frame -- & it’s just this negative sense
of the line i’ve come to wch has made Ray’s bk such a
breakthru in my eyes, it’s a brilliant critique --

on
size in writing (or what you call largeness, wch aint the
issue): all poems form one’s writing (&, to paraphrase the
“Horizon”’s most important sentence, all x leads to X), are
one, as LZ was sharp to be the 1st to say, as such (tho
surely the Romantics apprehended it, as did old Walt) --
if they be just poems, small & containable (& the one or
two page poem is just that -- containable) its size deter-
mind largely by the realities of little magazines (as was
just brought home again for me by Flora Danica, wch askd
for work only to send it back as “too large” for their
format) & those hideous bks of the ’50s of wch the Wes-
leyan series is the most glaring example -- all of the
problematics of object art are self-evident enuf (only w/
modifications to deal w/ the role of universities, crit-
icism in lit scenes, etc., wch differentiate poetry from
the visual arts: 20 poems equaling one bk of 60 pages is/
was ideal -- the poems fit comfortably into the mag formats
of the day & the 6-10 mag appearances wch added up to the
sum of poems to be printed (in a most cost-effective way,
as small bks) served as Advertisements for the book, plus
provided mag-connections necessary for reviews & positive
critiques wch resulted (the goal of this whole perverted
process) in tenure -- PLUS, it is possible to deal w/ the
small poem (& the ease w/ wch jerks like Rosenthal, How-
ard, etc. presume to deal w/ Creeley whom they think they
“take seriously” shows it very cleanly) w/ a minimum of
involvement -- in fact, that is/was one of the fundamental
312  The Language Letters

differences between poetry & fiction 1900-1950: that read-

ers of fiction had to commit themselves to 200-500 pages,
had to give themselves to that length, whereas readers of
poetry need not do so (tho there are many counter-exam-
ples, so this shldnt be read as more than a general ten-
dency, ok?) -- there is an “insideness” to a large work,
whether by Milton or David Jones or Robert Kelly, wch for
me [is] an area in wch most of the basic issues of writ-
ing occur most clearly -- each sentence ceases to be almost
mathematically accountable for the result of the whole (as
in HD’s short poems), one is immersed in the act of writ-
ing, reading -- that immersion is for me fundamental, it is
one way (& i think the best one) to get beyond the passive
reader, to force interactiveness (as Sunset Debris tries to
force the issue by leaving it in the reader’s hands again &
again & again) -- the whole problem of the prose poem has
been that it has always (save for Lautreamont) tried to use
prose language w/ poetic formality, rather than appropriat-
ing prose’s formal lessons for poetic purposes -- it reads
“like poetry” where it shldnt --

yr own poems are a lot like

Eigner’s in the sense that they’re immediately recognizable a
part of one writing process, but discrete so much so that one
cld not (not even a close reader as i hope i am) “order” them
into a sequence, chronologic or otherwise -- they remain sep-
arate occasions -- they both permit that easy distance (Paul
Blackburn’s poetry wld be a good comparison, in that his work
certainly did propose to add up to one life, but in a way
wch ignored the part-to-whole question as at least EP & LZ &
RD didnt) & it’s just the availability of that model to the
likes of Lyn Lifshin & Greg Kuzma (to deliberately pick the
most onerous examples) wch makes me distrust it, that size
-- one runs the risk of being, as Stein sd mistakenly of
Joyce, an unintelligible who anyone can understand (because
the understanding maketh few demands) --

on size as ambi-
tion (a pt of yours from an earlier letter): dont you
 The Language Letters 313

think Kelly, David Jones, Paul Metcalf, Tom McGrath, Ted

Enslin (w/ whom i’ve been corresponding of late on just
the issue of part-to-whole & size) have sufficiently
defused that possibility?

size is, as all writing ques-

tions are, finally, a political question -- i want works
wch force the issues i see as compelling (& the dictums of
such work are simple & traditional enuf: (1) direct treat-
ment of the object, (2) language is the object) -- to go
the route of small poems is (1) to make them objects in
the pejorative sense (esp. w/ the history of the bk hang-
ing over all our heads), (2) to propose a reactive stance
of one’s life to occasion (& here is just where Blackburn’s
work falls on its face, & Whalen), rather than proposing
a larger dialectical interacting w/ it -- life is seen as
passive in the small poem, by the fact of its size (& it is
just the linking-up of daily issues, perceivd as discrete,
wch is the 1st step toward a political stance in wch change
becomes a major question) --

ok, 5 hrs of this is what i’m

capable of esta noche (twas mid-afternoon when i began but
it’s fast growing dark here) -- hope all this answers a
few questions &, damn it, we SHLD GET TOGETHER SOON (like
in the next year),

love,

Ron

————

59. Bruce Andrews to Lyn Hejinian (10/9/77)

Dear Lyn,

Letter
from you with great pleasure.
314  The Language Letters

Yesirree, as it’s possible to say, your piece is exact

for the newsletter, now titled LANGUAGE, or precisely
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. Was glad to have it complementing the
different sorts of concerns expressed in some of your
other writing (in Masks, and in This 8, for instance):
your comments on my response in your letter seemed sharp
and to the point, welcome as well. Would be interesting to
explore the whole notion of the effect of a mode of physi-
cal existence, even down to the particulars of geography,
etc., on a style. But it sounds good in Berkeley -- good
for that group too I think to have another perspective.

What you say about NONE OF THE ABOVE is close to my own;

and Barry -- a fine person, here in town now, intersect-
ing your visit I think. Didnt know he was considered the
village ogre, but after all it’s actually all our village,
right? Curious as to that.

And you are coming to N.Y. (exclamation point). Great.

YES, we’ll get together. Call me when you get to town, if
you can (865-9857, or at school it’s 933-2233, ext. 473 to
leave message; can call the first number late). Maybe as
threesome with Barbara, who mentioned yr arrival.

And, making my week, will look forward with fond anticipa-

tion to your doing PRAXIS. No better news could have come
-- am excited. Glad it was right for you.

Soon: see you.

Warm regards,

Bruce

[BA annotates: Sometime you should send me a list of all

the TUUMBA titles in print & planned for 1978: for newslet-
ter, so we can plan ahead in soliciting reviews, for ex.]

————
 The Language Letters 315

60. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman (10/10/77)

Ron -- a note: letter soon. I’m starting to panic a lit-

tle about the distribution service now that we’re get-
ting enough material for the newsletter in time for what
I see as our schedule, which is to put first issue & much
of the 2nd together in our minds in time for doing a sub-
scription solicitation flyer to go out around Thanksgiv-
ing (plan issue Nov 1 say, so deadline for 1st issue like
Halloween). Thus, we can have a month for $ to trickle in
before printing 1st issue in early JANUARY. But that means
we have to have the full info on each of the mss. we’re
going to include in distrib. service in time for doing up
a 2 page or so “catalog” to include in the mass mailing we
do to solicit subscriptions (too expensive to do it any
other way than in the same envelope). I know yr life is in
turmoil but we have to hear from the dozen or so people I
asked you to write/rewrite to in a month. Otherwise every-
thing gets screwy. Please send progress report, & send all
the detailed info on as many people as you have that’ve
responded. [BA annotates: even if we don’t have mss. in
hand to master copy, we have at least to know pages so we
can advertise pieces.] Sorry that this is my only commu-
nication in a month. Been writing too many short letters
about the newsletter since your lovely masterpiece of a
letter arrived.

Love,

Bruce

————

61. Ron Silliman to Charles Bernstein (10/22/77)

Dear Charles,

This is in no sense a letter, or at least The letter I

want to get off in the near future, as I want to get on w/
316  The Language Letters

the “Horizon” re-write & am already hopelessly behind in

mail I was caught up on the only days (daze) ago.

As you
can see I’m at Tom Mandel’s place, half crashing, half
house-sitting. 4 of the other Calif St roomies are taking
over the office suite of the Arts Biweekly as their new
loft & Annie will be moving into a warehouse w/ her lover
& 2 or 3 friends. I’m also, as I guess I mentiond, the
project manager of the Tenderloin Ethnographic Research
Project, back on the periphery of social work.

Today’s
60
mail brought yr Tune (I’m 7 pages into it & thus far I’d
say it’s the strongest thing you’ve ever written, a truly
superb work fully yr own), new stuff from Carole K, my
last unemployment check & the NEA fellowship list. Looks
as tho Clark C was nearly the youngest person to get one
(Brian Swann?). I was bracing myself for not getting one,
but it was a bringdown anyhow. I sure cld use the money. &
of course the politics are as always right on the sleeve
again. Instead of all the California winners being friends
of Jack Shoemaker’s like last year (only 1 in that cate-
gory), literally half the writing faculty at SF State got
grants. So much for coincidence.

Will try & get stuff

together for the dist. svc. I like the logo L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E
quite a bit. Heard from Rae that you (or B?) wanted some
revisions in her essay. That made me wonder. My feeling’s
always been that, for a primary enterprise (SF Rev of Bks
wld be an example of a 2ndary one, or Soho News, that sort
of thing), one’s take ought to be that if the editor trusts
the writer then they shld make the commitment to change
nothing & if the editor doesnt have that trust, then they
got no business asking for work in the first place. I’ve

60. Charles Bernstein and Susan Bee, The Occurrence of Tune (New York: Segue, 1981).
 The Language Letters 317

seen too many folks like Steve Vincent or David Waggoner

who can’t read anybody’s work until they make their own
mark on it in some way, fidgeters. Forcing revision is not
the way to edit, punkt.

Lyn Hejinian’s at the Book Fair in

yr ville this wk. Hope you can run into her. Her politix
cld really stand a good dose of the real world (too much
class origin in her class stand), but otherwise a 1st rate
mind.

Vincent’s there too, probably running around w/ Harry

Lewis (who I like as a person quite a lot, in spite of the
Blackburnian necrophiliac aura). You shld check him out
just so you can tell me if my hunch that Steve is SF’s Jim
Sherry is anywhere near the target.

Will be in more contact

as I settle in here (only till Jan 1, when I move again w/
Peg -- looking forward to that development quite a bit).
Basta!

Ron

————

62. Ron Silliman to Charles Bernstein (10/28/77)

Dear Charles,

Congratulations on yr handling of Watten [. . .]: he

came back full of good words for you: in fact, acting
as if getting to know you was the fundamental 1st fact
of his journey. That shld do wonders for increasing the
cross-continental communication.

I’m at “home” Fri. nite, sipping Brandy, reading the 1st

Georges Bataille book to be publishd in English, The Story
of the Eye, wch in many ways is remarkably similar in its
318  The Language Letters

conception to Sunset Debris (in its sense of porn & vio-

lence as the origin of the image) -- Urizen just published
it (I’m reading a copy Lyn Hejinian bought Tom Mandel at
the Bookfair -- big woild ain’t it).

If Kirby Malone is still in NYC, get an address for me. I

saw his work in Dog City & thot a lot of it. Obviously has
a good head.

Mandel’s talk at Perelman’s last night was one of the

best (right up there with Bromige’s on intention & Wat-
ten’s on LZ) ever -- he discussed some fundamental con-
cepts of the “Horizon” in strictly mathematical terms, wch
was extremely hard for all but 2 or 3 of us (Erica Hunt, a
black woman who lives w/ Watten & had a strong philosophy
background & Geoff Young, who was an attendee of Lacan’s
lectures, plus yrs truly who felt right on my turf) for
the 1st hour, but finally turnd into the most full discus-
sion of the place of the subject (recognizing that as a
major issue in language-centerd writing) & of the fetish
(using Bruce’s “Funnels In” from This 8 as the example!)
in what Tom calls Ocularism.

The scene here just gets better & better. We’ve fundamen-
tally got ourselves 10 writers of 1st rate quality who are
operating on one idea -- that of language-centered writing
(Watten, me, Bob Perelman, Rae, Lyn, Kit Robinson, Steve
Benson, Carla Harryman, Mandel & David Bromige -- the last
2 representing “converts” from other fields of endeavor:
the novel & projectivism). The advantage of it is amaz-
ing -- there’s none of them who doesn’t constantly add
something to total discussion or scene, the result being
that the collective thinking is done very fast & gener-
ates more ideas faster than I’ve ever experienced (Hell
-- we’ve done the impossible, or you have actually, got-
ten Melnick Writing Again -- his piece will be in the mail
by Monday, sez he). Carla & I were actively wondering the
other day what Paris must have felt like, because we all
 The Language Letters 319

have an exhilaration wch is not explainable under normal

conditions. Even the old folks (Duncan, Antin, Ashbery
-- the latter who’s been in touch w/ me abt the possibil-
ity of an SF gathering for Partisan Review) & overly cau-
tious Michael Palmer are paying attention. Michael, partly
because Bromige has prompted him, has even been dropping
the superstar act bit for awhile to pay attention. Now
with L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E in your hands, we’re all (not just
SF, but NYC, DC also) in an amazingly privileged moment.
I remember a cpl of moments years ago (once telling Bar-
bara B & another time DiPalma) back in 1970 that language-­
centerd writing (tho I didn’t call it that at the time,
tho Bruce did, or at least by 1972 did) was equal to the
task of Pound, Olson, Joyce. Barbara thot that was horri-
bly arrogant (she was 19, thot those guys were demigods),
Ray agreed w/ me. Now it seems quite clear that the only
thing to prevent us from doing what we want on that scale
may be self-destructive urges (wch we’ve got to hold down,
work collectively against). But have you noticed that the
# of people who attend to the ideas of a language-centerd
writing now exceeds that of, say, Black Mountain? It’s an
idea wch has really been hitting home. (Doing the “Hori-
zon” rewrite, wch I’m 20 pp. into, of maybe 50-75 total,
is not made any easier by this, knowing that the larg-
er-than-individual matrix, the shared one, is right now at
a highly volatile, fast-moving, point, that the newslet-
ter is going to define writing for our time if you & Bruce
just give it its full head, we have between the lot of us,
lots of responsibility).

Alan Davies is at Fire Island right now. If you shld get

a chance to meet/know him, do. He’s definitely for real
(echh, did I write that?). Grenier’s SENTENCES is going to
be done by Michael Waltuck [Waltuch](or some such spell-
ing). I’m sending you a copy of something I wrote for the
State Arts Council here (on Abigail C[hild], Bromige,
Terry Fox, performance & decontextualization).
320  The Language Letters

3 shots of Brandy will get you drunk.

More soon,

Ron

————

63. Charles Bernstein to Ron Silliman (11/1/77)

Ron,

Got yr letter this morning, wch was as usual exciting & gd

reading. Am off on Friday morning to Boston (visit Stanley
Cavell, hope to meet Grenier, &c.) & then a few days in
Vermont, back to NY on Wednesday --

The newsletter is looking good. Much copy, lots of

energy getting generated. What wld you think of using the
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E logo for the distributing svc too -- I
mean we need a name, soon. & wld be an advantage to make
our three-way collective visibly a part of the newslet-
ter. (& remember, if as you say, weve got hard jobs cut
out for us in editing the newsletter, youve got a special
position in terms of that too -- yr feedback ++ being
crucial to that enterprise as I see it.) I’ll ask Johanna
Drucker -- if I dont miss her before she goes to Greece
(tho I think she’ll be -- later on -- moving to NY) what
she thinks abt the xeroxing -- of course yr right abt it
being printed work -- the xeroxes wld at best be a sam-
pler, an illustration, & probably shld have a word of
warning attached to them). By the way, Coolidge wrote
(Bruce) for some reason assuming that for the distrib-
uting service we wanted only unpublished mss., rather
than what is even more obvious, o/p stuff (i.e., Mayer’s
Story, etc.) -- he must have misunderstood a bit, tho I
think Bruce is wrtng to rectify that all. (Coolidge wrote
James Sherry that he wasnt much interested in the second
half of Roof #3!) (whats that you say in “three fifths
 The Language Letters 321

equals” abt the garbo stance????!!!)61 Barry sd he’d

show you [Grenier’s] “Three Possibilities --- for Larry
Eigner,” wch Ive been sending copies of out -- kind of an
amazing piece, tho a prblm to put upfront in the first
issue as part of an Eigner feature since it wld take just
abt the whole issue [see appendix 1]. Ive offered to put
the piece on the distr svc & he seemd to agree to that
-- & I am hoping we can work something out to use with
the Eigner piece in the first issue -- maybe serializing
the long piece over several issues. Anyway we have his
Keats piece wch will pblsh along with a piece by Barrett
on Grenier. Any other wrd on the distr srvc from yr end?
What abt the idea of getting cheaper xeroxes in Berkeley?
Suppoze, since you dont say no, that Lyn’s Tuumba bk, o/p
now, is okay to distr in xerox.

what else? this letter getting constantly interrupted by

phone, people wlkng in & out. want to get the initial mail-
ing -- i.e., catalgue [catalogue] with $ & pg length, out
in one month’s time, so we’re getting down to the wire
(??). by the way, the word has it that T Towle sent a sear-
ing attack on yr piece in the SF Rev of Bks to the pblcn
-- defending Violi & himself agst the charge that they make
only “minor art objects” -- did you hear abt that? Also,
it looks like John Ensslin of Redd Herring Press (new) is
going to put out Occurrence of Tune, hopefully by Spring.

Malone’s address is on the enclosed flier from Pod

-- note how many bks hes plng -- plus the “E-Pod”
series, wch will include a section of Legend (he
wants -- did i say? the enclosed triad plus Ron-
Steve), plus many other projects (incl a bk of my
“prose” format wrks).

i’m sorry all the people have left town. got a note from
Davies that he was going to be in the city during the

61. “3 Fifths Equals” is the Bernstein, McCaffery, Silliman triad in LEGEND. The passage
about Garbo reads, “it is the sign (S/s) of an intellectual coward to pose as Garbo. . . .”
322  The Language Letters

weekend, but i guess he didnt make it here -- we’ll meet

soon, tho, i’m sure.

just realized i put this page in backward -- sorry.

so: much enclosed here. will get to the article you sent
later today -- & also back to work on a piece i’m wrtng
for the leather bound reissue of Gerald Green’s The Last
Angry Man -- oh the demands of $ wrk.

seems theres continually an enormous amount of detail

between us in the letters of late -- wch is a whole dif-
ferent tone than before. so many notes -- wch is a day-by-
day thing, maybe actually the best kind of letter inter-
change because least abstract, generalized.

so, all for now.

love,

Charles

————

64. Charles Bernstein to Jackson Mac Low (11/13/77)

Jackson,

Spent a gd part of the evening here going over the two

interviews you’ve published -- in Vort & The Craft of
Poetry. Really, they’re kind of complete, esp. taken
together, so it’s hard to come up with something completely
“new.” Still, here are a group of questions, wch you may be
tempted to respond to one or two -- maybe just to rethink a
point you’ve already made. Anyway, yr piece will be printed
in the newsletter along with a biblio -- if we can get it
together it cld be extensive list of the books -- & Bar-
bara’s piece. Space limits make it necessary to keep yr
replies & comments on yrslf down to under 600 words -- so
 The Language Letters 323

really quite short -- wch I hope will make it easier for

you to get to this soon as we’d like to print your feature
in the first issue -- for Bruce & me having a section on
your work wld be a gd way to start off this venture -- so I
hope you’ll be able to get to this real soon. Thanks much
if you can. So -- here goes -- hope one or two make you
want to say something ---

1. Are you interested in having emotion in your process-­

oriented, programmatic, poetry?

2. What do you think of “cheating” -- changing results so

that the poem conforms to some non-procedurally derived
sense of meaning -- when composing basically chance
derived poems?

3. You’ve said that lately you read mostly narrative or

“personal” or, anyway, directly expressed, writing? Do you
find you have less interest in work which is procedural or
where more primary attention is paid to language struc-
tures, that is, where the look & sound & placement of the
words are as, or more, important than the “meaning” they
“convey”?

4. You have long been involved in anarchist & pacifist

politics. Apart from proving [providing] specific subject
matter for some of your work, how wld you say your poli-
tics have informed your poetic work?

5. What value do you think having to decipher elements

of [CB inserts: one or x] poems -- literally uncover the
index phrases used in an acrostic or diacrostic -- has? Or
do you think that the deciphering is unnecessary and one
should just read the poem? Or what?

6. Have you been interested in any of the recent work that

focuses much of its attention on the language of a work
-- sound, look, syntax -- but without recourse, at least
finally, to chance procedures, &c. That is work which
324  The Language Letters

might, say, look like some of the Stanzas,62 & employ open
sense of syntax, but where ordering decisions are made by
aesthetic judgment not by programmatic operation. (Here
I’m thinking of much of the work published in THIS or TOT-
TEL’S -- Coolidge, say, or Eigner, for that matter, plus,
plus. . . .)

7. Have you been interested in Wittgenstein’s work, in the

Philosophical Investigations, to explore how language use
actually forms our ways of seeing, making meaning, &c.?

8. What do you think of the idea of an “avant-garde”?

9. Has Stein’s work been important to you. How?

10. Have you had much interest in Projectivism, Field Com-

position, Black Mountain, & so on -- Olson or Creeley, say?

11. What’s your sense of the work that has been influen-
tial for many people in some way of other associated with
the St. Mark’s Poetry Project -- Ashbery, O’Hara, Schuy-
ler, or -- Berrigan, Padgett, Brainard, or, more recently?

12. Any thoughts about what Zukofsky was up to in his

work?

okay. some questions. get back in touch soon.

best!

Charles

————

62. Jackson Mac Low, Stanzas for Iris Lezak (Millertown, NY: Something Else Press), 1971.
 The Language Letters 325

65. Lyn Hejinian to Charles Bernstein (12/9/77)

Dear Charles,

Thanks for sending me a copy of BEZOAR. Paul Kahn does

send me copies regularly, so that I have two copies of
this issue. That is wonderful, as I’ve someone to give the
extra copy to, about which, more in a minute.

Meanwhile, your “St. McC.” is wonderful -- really. It

reminds me most of the fragments of Sappho -- a few words
made to seem many, by implication of what’s not there --
or, what’s not there rendered there. Which is to say, it
seems full, dense, and yet a distillation of the possibil-
ities.

You see how much I like it.

I, too, have meant to write. I’ve wanted to thank you --

especially -- for hosting me while I was in New York. It
was a wonderful visit for me; I miss New York, and espe-
cially all my, now, friends there. Here we talk of you.
“Charles wrote . . . ,” and, “Bruce said . . . ,” and so
on. It is probably the same there, especially since Ron
is so closely involved with the Newsletter and Distribu-
tion project. I imagine he has written you the information
I was able to get about Xerox. It wasn’t very precise, as
I hadn’t precise questions to ask at the various places I
visited. Nonetheless, it seems clear that the costs here
are less than in New York. When you get around to the
actual process, of course, you should let me know what
sort of binding, if any, you would want. All the places I
dealt with do binding, in various modes -- spiral, sta-
pled, etc.

Several friends of Larry’s (and now mine) from New York

have been staying here for the past weeks -- both musi-
cians. One is a guitarist named Eugene Chadbourne, who
has two or three records out. He plays -- unlike anyone,
326  The Language Letters

but closest to Derek Bailey of anyone -- that is, not

at all like George Benson. He is here with a saxophone
player named John Zorn. John came across some copies of
MIAM here, with Ron’s 2197, and jumped. “Ron Silliman?”
He asked if we had ever read anything else by him. As it
turned out, John reads only books on music and the writing
of Ron, Bruce, Clark Coolidge, you, and a few others. He
asked if I’d ever heard of you.

John plays music that is close to Bruce’s writing, and he

does some object performances (I don’t know how else to
describe them) that are exquisite. I told him to send you,
and Bruce too, notices of any performances that he does
in New York. If you are able, you would probably like his
work very much. Certainly I do.

Since I’ve been back from New York, my life has been won-
derful, though I’ve felt that my writing was muddled -- the
effect of the city catching up, and the too great influence
of the “scene” here. I find influence often perplexing, or
at least distracting. It makes me hyper-critical; I felt
artistically pale. But that palor is going away, and the
last few days I’ve done work that interests me again. My
own kind of work.

Meanwhile, Christmas, and the children bustling about

that. Better, Larry and I, after living together for
nearly 6 years, are getting married next week. I feel
extraordinarily happy about that -- isn’t it odd? I
thought I wasn’t interested in marriage at all, and sud-
denly it is happening and it feels wonderful. The children
are very happy -- “are you REALLY my stepfather now?” That
is odd, too -- they’ve lived with Larry far longer than
they ever lived with John, their father. Maybe this has to
do with language?

Thank you again for sending the BEZOAR. I will give the
extra copy to John Zorn. And do write sometime when you’ve
got a moment -- though you must be busy, arranging the
 The Language Letters 327

life of the Newsletter. With that, of course, I sympa-

thize. As I end this, to you, I have to write to book-
stores, and return unsolicited manuscripts.

Very best,

Lyn

————

66. Ron Silliman to Charles Bernstein (2/18/78)

Charles,

This wld appear to be one way to write a letter. The flip

side is one of the rejected typefaces for Ketjak. We’re
now getting down to questions of cover & blurb-matter for
Serendipity dist. svc stuff -- so it shldnt be long. I
spent the day typing up Tottel’s (am right abt to begin
“The Taste Is What Counts” next, i.e., manana). The coher-
ence of this issue as a whole is a real delight to me
-- partly cause I know of no gathering of work (even by
these same folk, you, me, Bob P, Lyn H, Lynne D, Alan D)
wch looks even approximately similar -- yet the material
is constantly referring to one another. I typed up Drey-
er’s material (leaving in a number of the anomalies in the
text after she indicated that save for spelling errors (a
lot) she pretty much wanted it that way, so there’s no
pattern for how many spaces after a period (both Perelman
& Hejinian use only one space, but at least one can adjust
to that quickly), even for between words or after commas).
Lyn’s piece is her text for her talk here & I’m really
pleased with it. She let me know several times that if I
wasnt happy with it, I cld have something else -- a result
I think of her imposing (in her own head) her attitudes
toward her talk-presence (hesitant, generous) with that of
the text (wch is really a passionate position paper, built
largely out of her responses to Barbara Baracks’ stay out
here, tho BB is not once mentioned by name (& in fact is
328  The Language Letters

called “he” in a few places). Davies’ piece is much the

same, tho more directly done as a prose poem. Plus of
course Dreyer’s letters are in fact only partly derived
from her correspondences (or, rather, they’re letters in
an idealized sense, not unlike our dyad [“we (internal
auditory meatus). . .”]). It all hangs nicely together.

Got interesting notes from both Berkson & Coolidge. Bill

was quick to pick up on exactly what was going on & glad
to be re-assured that he had in fact not fuckd up. Clark
was a tad deee-fensive, conceding that he had in fact
changed his mind, but had been led to this confusion
because of “having to write to so many people” concern-
ing this one item, Big Sky 3. Wch is of course hardly the
case, but it’s a much better response than having him
want to fight or some such awful possibility (Vot a bore
dat wld be!). He hadnt gotten his copies of the symposium
as yet (tho he does have a typescript thereof, so there
shld be no surprises to speak of). I’ve gotten good feed-
back on that (Taggart liked yr piece in particular, by the
by), tho a couple of comments to the effect that it hath
no women in it at all (wch has something to do with the
fact that Mayer, Acker, Baracks, Armantrout & even Hejin-
ian turned aside the chance to do so -- as of course did a
lot of males, incl. Creeley & Antin & Davidson & Berkson &
Fagin, but it turnd out not to be so one sided).

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E has been getting excellent marks out here,

even Watten was visibly impressed to see it. In fact, the
one negative comment I got was from Steve Vincent (our
own James Sherry) who sd it was “so white it hurt” wch he
meant only partly in the sense of goyisha v. schwartza,
but also aesthetically, as tho he found it an intellec-
tual equivalent to the tinfoil walls that used to bedeck
Warhol’s factory. I got a letter from Paul Kahn who told
me that he found “language-centered writing unreadable”
in general & somehow felt that Rae’s article was a most
incisive comment on the myths wch we entertain (Acker
also sent Rae a long note re her article, mostly of the
 The Language Letters 329

why wasnt I included variety). Actually Paul’s position

isnt as hardassed as I just made it sound -- it’s that he
still has that romantic attachment to the role of words as
Xpression, as documents of the appropriately lived poet’s
life (a position he shares in good deal with Eliot Wein-
berger, who gets it from the ancient Japanese-Sino tra-
ditions). Wch explains the occasional clunker issues of
Bezoar (such as the current #, w/ the genuinely bad Cree-
ley poem (wch plays games not w/ rime so much as the fact
the RC knows that he’s almost the only person in the past
20 years to do anything of any importance w/ rime, so is
reminding you of his early social role w/in the blk mtn
rise of the 50s wch likewise fails to make any interest-
ing exploration of the issue of deafness (if that in fact
is what it is) wch it touches on twice). The best work in
that issue is the Michael Corr piece & that’s only margin-
ally interesting.

I wld use that same term for the Joe Cardarelli’s 3rd of
Phantom Pod, a few nice licks but devoid of any idea what
to do with them. This Berriganism thrice removed (via
Hollo, who ought to know he’s a better poet than Ted) is
not very sustaining. I’ve just gotten into Anselm’s sec-
tion, wch dont look like his strongest neither. As I think
I said on the phone, I dont read him for the poems but for
the language used, wch I do think is always remarkably
strong (&, as I may also have sd, is a key in my mind also
to seeing how Hollo is a central figure for Grenier). I
just finishd Microjourner Socosms [Sojourner Microcosms],
wch really is a testament to his limits (but wch has only
2 typos, very few for a small press volume that size, Bar-
rett did good).

Think back to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, the one thing with your

review of Drucker that’s been in my mind to say is that I
got the sense that if I had not seen the book (Lyn H has
a copy, since she & Johanna are verrrry close friends) I
wd not have had much sense of what it was like from the
review, nor did you deal with the ways in wch different
330  The Language Letters

letters of the alphabet represent different folk in the

westcoast poesy scene (I have been told that I am one of
the characters there, but I honestly have no idea wch).
Or its relation to fine press alphabet books in general,
wch have a ready stable market & makes that entire writ-
ing proposition into a $-making one for J. Wch may not
be possible in five00 words but wch all seems to me to
be somehow central to the idea she has of writing as a
totally involuted self-sustaining activity. (I like what
she writes, own 2 books of hers, have read others, but
dont really have any confidence that she’ll still be writ-
ing in 10 years, perhaps even 2 -- she’s spread thin &
doesnt have that really massive level of commitment wch I
allus see in the few people who do survive to write stuff
of consequence (& natch I’ve seen some folk, like John
Gorham,63 who were massively talented poets just fizzle
for lack of same -- I wish I had one tenth of the natural
ability w/ words he had: in my case it comes very hard,
but who knows, maybe that’s why I’ve stuck with it.

Fred Jameson & Stanley Aronowitz are going to publish a

mag calld Social Text, wch ought to be worth a look-see.
Sposed to be an odd shape, like 6 by 15 (that is 6 inches
high) so that it won’t fit comfortably into bookshelves
dot dot dot. That crowd is currently ballyhooing a char-
acter named [Étienne] Balibar, an Althusser protege who
is writing from a minority position w/in the French CP,
to the effect that a socialist state is by definition a
dictatorship of the proletariat (in contrast w/ the FCP
position). His position sounds a lot like Maoism w/o Mao
to me, with its basis in the Stalinist Socialism in One
Country concept, tho conceding the existence of a world-
wide economic totality. If the Cambodia-Vietnam war &
Eritrea-Ethiopia-­
Somalia war teach us anything, it shld be
to be doubly wary of the idea that socialism can exist in

63. John Gorham studied with Robert Kelly at Bard College in the 1960s and later
attended graduate school at UC Berkeley. Silliman published his poem “The Tunnel” in Tot-
tel’s 4 (July 1971).
 The Language Letters 331

a country when it does not likewise exist on that larger

scale; the other thing those 2 wars indicate is that we’ve
reached a new stage in the history of the left, even more
clearly so than the neo-Menshevik tendency of “Eurocommu-
nism.” Lots of odd stuff to figure out these days.

Steve Benson gave a talk the other night at 50 Lang-

ton Street, the first time Bob’s held them there (it is
an artists’ controlled gallery with a heavy NY-perfor-
mance orientation). It didnt do so well. Partly it was the
space, very cramped. Partly it was Steve (wch he himself
conceded the next day, telling me he was unhappy with the
whole event). Partly it was the presence of a few people
from the performance art scene, who kept asking the most
unbelievably academic & banal questions, as if they were a
code for an unspoken hostility. Steve was trying to talk
off the top of his head while going through a randomly
ordered set of 3 x 5 cards with ideas, quotes, statements
about “careers in the arts” but the questions (wch were on
the order of trying to figure out the frontstage/backstage
distinctions & Steve’s desire to erase the border) got him
off the track & he never regained it. Nowhere the spectac-
ular failure that Barbara had, but a down evening none-
theless. I wonder what Steve will end up doing with that
information. I myself find myself less & less inclined to
think of performance art in serious terms at all, tho to
always think of my own readings as demanding the formal-
ity of their own occasion (I never just read a grab-bag of
works, it usually is a specifically chosen piece or small
series of related pieces). Steve tho has a knack for per-
formance wch is so strong that it wld seem quite easy for
him to be a performance artist as such (& in some respects
his work is more developed there than on the page). But as
a writer, & I think he views himself as that foremost, the
issues wch are presented by performance are always mar-
ginal & serve mostly (the 4 horsemen are a good case in
pt, since they do it & do it well) to point out the exis-
tence of other states of any text, but seem incapable of
going much beyond that. Otherwise performance turns into
332  The Language Letters

dance, theater or comedy & its relevance to writing drops

away quickly altogether.

Something else I’ve been giving lots of thot to lately as

well is the line & the “problem of the line” wch is really
the problem of “rationalizing” the line, whether as met-
rical norm or breath-unit or image is nonetheless a con-
ventionalism wch serves mostly to signal the presence of
the poem w/o further making a major contribution to what
occurs therein, save in ways of decoration (reading Cree-
ley for his linebreaks is possible, they’re lush in expe-
rience, but finally lushness shld gag anyone). I’ve come
a long way towards the idea that the line is the myth of
poetry of our day as strong & negative as rime once was.
Wch may be a convenient conclusion since the only work of
mine to use the line to any extent in years is 2197, where
its most notable feature is its arbitrariness & ambiva-
lence toward its own role as linearity, but nonetheless
I cannot imagine a redefinition of the line wch wld not
in the long run be no more a solution to “the problem of
the line” than any of the others & we have seen just how
quickly the Olsonian-breath codification has turned into
a turgid thing (the problem is that such devices serve to
conventionalize the poem, to turn it into a convention,
such as allll the occasional poems of Blackburn’s & the
endless # of imitations thereof we are now faced with:
when the poem is converted into a convention of the poem,
its whole role & function is compromised).

Reading Bruce’s Love Songs (wch I had bound since the box
didnt survive the mailing & I was lucky the poems did --
I also, by the by, had all the dist. svc orders I sent
out, save for Pcoet, the Tottel’s 15 (wch was my very last
non-xerox one thereof) & T 11 wch seemed pointless, also
velo-bound: I certainly dont intend for these photocopies
to be ephemera & as it was possible to incorporate those
bindings into the check you sent, I was only too happy to
do same. I also sent Gottlieb & Peter copies of the CC
symposium), I often find myself having many of the [same?]
 The Language Letters 333

objections (to the performance base in many of the pieces,

also to his sense of the page wch seems to me to be first
of all a decorative one, w/o a compelling function in the
language as such). It’s a funny collection. Much of it is
brilliant, but as a book (shld it ever be issued) I wonder
if it wldnt be of more use to him if he cut it down to a
third of its size (but natch I can understand why not, as
I’d not cut out half of 2197 or any other similar piece)
Its overall tone is sooo light that it’s really amazing.
He really is a lyric poet of a new type & he seems really
limited by his not worrying enough abt the issues he con-
fronts (lots of easy solutions in that collection where
harder ones seem calld for).

Ray’s Planh seems to me a really strong piece for him,

happily. It was really nice to get it in the mail. Also
to see “Rand” in Terraplane [Annex 3] (Perelman gave me a
copy after going into a long & most paind monologue abt
how Tod & Brita had switched the 4th & 5th pages of his
long poem therein). Both Bob & you seem to have what I wld
call fairly early work in that issue & what really ended
up standing out for me was Keith Waldrop & to a lesser
extent Rosmarie. I’ve got the Roof DC issue, but I’ve only
glanced at it so far, no heavy reading. I can’t imagine
[what] Doug Messerli is doing in that collection?! With
DiPalma imitations at that. It seems quite clear to me (or
anyone at this distance) that that guy w/ his 2 mags shows
just how shallow his commitment is to any of his own work
(he will write what people praise most of his own work &
it will always look the way it’s supposed to & it won’t
challenge anybody to think for a single instant). Even if
I have trouble with Peter Inman’s attempts at decentral-
ization his texts (ditto Kirby’s “hallic voo” or however
it’s spelled), at least the effort there is utterly real &
committed.

What the SF issue will look like I dont know, but I got
my suspicions it won’t look any better than the DC one.
Sherry handled everyone abt as badly as cld be imagined,
334  The Language Letters

tho he did apologize generally whenever called on it. Tho

Ted Pearson got left out solely because JS wrote to him at
the wrong address (i.e., at the Grand Piano, rather than
at his home, tho JS had the # in front of him) so that
Ted never heard from him until it was too late. He was so
angry that he couldnt talk about it w/o visibly shaking.
Sherry’s publishing my Rilke transmogrification instead of
the section of 2197 I sent him (wch sez mucho to me abt
both his ability to read & his sense of what he wants in
the mag -- he’d rather go for variety over quality, tho
the latter is the antithesis of a good little mag stance).

When I get Tottel’s done (I’m working hard on it, as Bob’s

Seven Works shld be coming out from The Figures in April
& I want to get “An Autobiography” into print before the
book is there) I’ll be devoting my time heavily toward
both completing the collab (yeah, how about that?!), the
“Horizon” rewrite (calling it “Language Writing”64), plus
the long poem I’m working on at this pt (wch feels very
good & solid to be doing). I’m working on the piece on
myself for L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E (have in fact a draft I’ve been
working on for a cpl of weeks), plus a piece on Gitin for
a northern british mag wch I’m doing in the size & com-
pactness wch I think might also make it useful for L=A=N
if & when you’d feel like a piece on David. Will be pub-
lishing one or two sections from “Language Writing” in the
SF Review of Books & am now thinking that what I’ll do is
have excerpts published there & in a few other places (100
Posters, Bezoar, B[M?]) & then maybe go for bringing it
out either (1) as a commentary to a gathering of a large
language-centered collection of poets, esp. if I can talk
boundary 2 into devoting a whole issue thereto, (2) then
with a few other pieces (specifically the piece on my own
work, the Coolidge article, the Duncan article from the
Maps special #, “Disappearance of the Word,” & then “LW”)

64. Silliman clarifies that “this was an anticipation of what became, in 2002, my blog. It
never got off the ground here -- I wanted something akin to [Theodor Adorno’s] Minima
Moralia, but could not do it at this point.”
 The Language Letters 335

as a larger bk, possibly (?) via Open Letter. Dont really

know, but right now that seems to me the best way to
approach both doing all of it & making use of it.

Been loving this Shakuhachi album [Kohachiro Miyata with

the ensemble Nipponia] I got, on Nonesuch, the other day.
Deep Japanese flute with 17th century compositions, audi-
ble breathing etc., great tone: if you can imagine what
Paul Horn wld be like without the sentimentality. . . .
Saw That Obscure Object of Desire (so-so), Dersu Uzala
(superb), Turning Point (so-so), 1900 (good in spite of
its simple liberal politics). Probably will see Renaldo &
Clara, wch seems to be a deliberate attempt to play around
with its figures as cultural myths. Saw the Ali-Spinks
fight on the telly & loved that. Tho I blew the chance to
make abt $40 on it. Sigh.

So. This is a letter. Done so far in less than 3 hours,

which is pretty good for somebody who typed for 5 hours
this afternoon. How are you? Have you found a new job yet?
I’m seriously thinking of looking for one myself after
Tottel’s is done. The liberal politics of the administra-
tion of the agency which [this?] project is situated in are
doing no good for the community, they’re actively assisting
(or wld be, if [not for] a staff revolt wch I & two of my
coworkers on the ethnography project led) in having people
led off to the state hospitals for the insane for “inappro-
priate behavior.” We had to take one person to the hospi-
tal the other day for a bad drug reaction which was nothing
more than the “normal” side-effects you get in a community
when the largest agency in a neighborhood is a psychiat-
ric facility wch drugs everybody: people play pill-line
games and, voila, there ya go with street use of prolixin
(one drug wch has no justifiable medical usage save from an
institutional-convenience standpoint) & all the other phe-
nothiazines. Which means that we’re going out of our way to
see to it that our reports won’t empower our liberal admin-
istration to justify any additions to that tendency as it
stands (& in that sense we’re in a classic cross-fire, if
336  The Language Letters

we did any decent research we wld be endangering the com-

munity, so we’re going to protect them at the cost of doing
a good job, wch of course demoralizes us as a team, & is
something we can get away with only because our administra-
tors wouldnt know a good job from a shitty one: we’ll get
an equal amt of praise either way. There is a possibility
that the project itself may end up being extended beyond
the September terminal date & that I cld get, if I wanted,
one of the co-director positions at a higher salary than I
now have, but I think I’d much rather be writing dog food
ads or something. I can’t even justify it as unpaid polit-
ical work within a paid environment (as organizing in a
union local or at a factory might be) since I & those with
whom I can work politically here (hippie anarchists sans
exception, whose response is more gut than thought) lack
any base for making any major gains: there is no way we
can penetrate the board of directors, this clubby group
of closet gays & fag hags who are all Very Into Opera:
they’re so conservative that they didnt even stop to con-
sider what wld happen if the new executive director (the
3rd since October) had subtle anti-gay biases, wch she
does, wch has the third of the staff wch is gay most
upset. So work is often a battleground & not that condu-
cive to my “other” life. So it makes me wonder about your
own cryptic statements about needing a new job, more $,
etc. Do tell.

Peg & I are getting along well, tho rockily in many ways.
She still feels that she ought seriously to be living in
the Carolinas & that she can’t be what she wants to be
unless she does & needless to say that is not where I
expect to be. Which has been a problem that has constantly
reared itself into view for the past 3 years. She’s also
been sick several times this winter & pretty much down (to
the pt that she’s seeing somebody about it) & all of these
things, along with the normal stuff, like moving (aghh)
have imposed themselves into our relationship. It leaves
me alternatively comfortable & happy & then anxious for it
to resolve itself one way of the other, even if painfully,
 The Language Letters 337

and with some sense that until it does I may just be

“marking time” in this space. Ah quien sabe? I do not find
human relationships all that easy, as you may have gath-
ered by now. My mother was/is a genuine loner, who might
well become a hermit of sorts in her old age (she’s only
51, younger than Creeley). My Grandparents, who raised me
were either crazy (she) or deaf (he), so both pretty much
in their own worlds. Wch leaves me having to make these
leaps of faith & attention to hang out with other people
for any extended length of time. Peg has been really good
for me in that respect. She’s been the one relationship
which has been completely possible intellectually as well
as emotionally wch has not hinged on the fact that we were
(or that I was) writing. I really cld be an auto mechanic
& it wld be all the same, as long as I was a good one.

So: this is all I can handle getting down on this page

este noche. Do write & let me know what your ideas are for
expanding the dist. svc (if any), future #s of the mag,
job, life, NYC, everything!

Love,

Ron

————

67. p. inman to Charles Bernstein (6/22/78)

Dear Charles:

Just a note (probably) after overly long silence in

resp. to your letter -- truth is things are rather cha-
otic in Illinois -- whether we’re staying here or back to
east, job &c.: everything more or less up in the air, so
(threatening to lapse off into some pseudo Neal Cassady
rap at any minute) thought not one of my strongpoints at
the moment -- but: your letter was clarifying re: getting
outside of language or not. I can see how yr difference
338  The Language Letters

w/ Habermas on that would make you more sympathetic to

Coolidge’s (fill in the blank: positivist, reductionist,
minimalist-ic) approach, though -- (& before the though I
noticed Coolidge using quoted from Zettel, so obv. he’s
read Wittgenstein . . . obv.?) -- though I’m not sure
Wittgenstein’s language game ties in neatly w/ Coolidge’s
own lang. phenomenology (Huh?). It seems his whole game
theory hinges on convention. I mean, he’s saying you cd
invent such & such a game (linguistic or otherwise), but
if it didnt tie in w/ some sort of usage (& doesnt he
mean social here?) or convention of use, it wd be a pri-
vate game -- language. Strictly speaking, he says, that’s
impossible -- or meaningless. Never really sure.

------ Question mark after all this. ------ Anyway,

there’s a certain way in which Coolidge’s lang. is pri-
vate. I mean, it obviously doesnt preclude one’s looking
into it & coming away w/ a lot, but it’s not the trans-
parent language of, say, the novel (Flaubert &c.), poem
-- maybe that’s clear. & the way I understand it reclaim-
ing words for one’s self would be the first step toward
a social reclamation of same. -- (This turned out longer
than a note, but it’s also incoherent -- why I wouldnt
want to write “a piece” -- apiece -- for LANGUAGE. Basi-
cally I’m sort of an agnostic about all this -- beyond
certain methodological assumptions -- & so, eventually,
any piece I might write wd end up sounding like a book
report. But it is interesting getting yr thoughts on
the matter -- & wd be Bruce’s too, I suspect -- because
alt[hough] there’s probably a pt (pen going) where you do
have to ground things in something other than “it’s inter-
esting” -- so, as an e.g. of what I’m saying, is Levi-
Strauss’ idea of bricolage -- (bricoleurs, peop?) which
is what most poets are/do) -- Pen out. Anyway thanks for
the invitation. Note part begins now. Kirby Malone (we
suspect) sent E-Pod. Mentioned more of Legend will be
in, also a book of yrs. Malone & Reese (esp.) seem to be
doing interesting work. Never met Reese before moving. As
it turns out we are moving back east -- frightened off by
 The Language Letters 339

seeing Blue Collar (now that’s one I wouldnt mind seeing

twice) -- We’ll be in transit till some time in August,
then DC suburbs -- will send address then. Hopefully see
you sometime.

Best,

Peter

————

68. Bruce Andrews to Ron Silliman (8/4–5/78)

Dear Ron,

There’s about a dozen particulars to bring up, but let

me, w/out consulting our letters (all unanswered), get a
few things off to you. I’ve been thinking of you virtually
every day, for one reason or another, more & more feeling
your centrality as inspiration & movement. These though are
a few things about L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. Issue 4 is in the mail
& should be to you soon. Your letter commenting on #2 is
closely read [BA annotates: & will be answered] -- many of
the complaints are ones I share: more & more I feel inca-
pable of really making this publication into what we most
need & yet. . . beyond the thought of relying on a few peo-
ple for longer articles (& there are few of those, & there
are dangers beside -- most people use it as an opportunity
to be conventional, an avant-garde Parnassus, or etc.),
difficulty in people seeing the need to develop their ideas
in public, or to devote any energy to discussing others’
work. Incredible feeling, to the fore, of how atomized it
all is, this “proto”-community (spurred by reading 2 good
books -- Alan Wolfe’s Limits of Legitimacy: Political Con-
tradictions of Contemporary Capitalism & Michael Parenti’s
Power & the Powerless, about the best of the young (mid
30s or so) political science work dealing w/ non-3rd World
political economies). Pulling teeth to get material: we’re
turning down virtually little (though one could always say,
340  The Language Letters

but unsympathetically, that this is all a result of our

immature length limits -- but I seriously doubt it) -- as
Charles doubtless told you, we’re going quarterly in 1979 &
will be a little more flexible on length. Anyway we’re put-
ting together issue #5 now, which I’ll type in September &
go out in October -- probably features on Palmer & Grenier
(hoping Barry comes thru there), 2 pieces on Raworth, plus
I think things on Perelman (Korzeniowsky), Ponge, R. Wal-
drop (moi), Eigner (Davies), interspecies communication,
seriality, Davidson?, Dreyer?, & etc., etc. Need more mate-
rial & are now soliciting, for it, for #6, & for next year,
or starting to.

I’d (& Charles enthusiastic) like to run an excerpting,

indicated as such & could certainly mention where/when
availability of whole, of your work on Benjamin.65 It’s a
key & valuable work & centers on ideas I really feel we
need in the dialogue that sputters along (& is revivified
by each good phrase) in the magazine. I very much hope this
seems plausible to you. I’ve spent a number of hours w/
the piece & have prepared a proposed excerpting, focusing
on the ideas I most want embodied in the magazine. It’s
enclosed. I’d happily print it as is, but am certainly open
to your tinkering with it a bit (though at present it’s way
overlength, so any emendations would have to not involve
extra), but that might be time consuming, plus you’re on
to other projects. Another constraint is time: we’d need
approval, or any editorial changes, w/in the month (by
Sept. 1 --). What say? (Am on knees asking for some variant
of permission, since I feel great affection for it as it
stands & want to have it included.) Best write to Charles
(with variant of yes!) since I’ll be in Cape Hattaras
(island off coast North Carolina) from Aug 12-27, w/ Ellen,
on (for her) much needed vacation, first in 12 months.
Next, thinking beyond issue 5, we’re in midst of figur-
ing out where to head w/ issues 6-10. So would like to tap

65. Silliman’s essay “Benjamin Obscura,” L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E 6 (December 1978).

 The Language Letters 341

yr giant brain (remember book on father’s shelf, growing

up, Giant Brains, with outlandish neurophyz pix).66 About
12 months ago got list from you of people in SF (etc.) of
whom I wasnt aware w/ some mention of their interests,
which led to some pieces (Child, Pearson) & many hesita-
tions & “soons”s. I’d like an update -- if things have
changed -- [BA annotates: e.g. -- people you’ve got some
sense of brain wattage from; either in person or, often,
thru mail. I mean, & this would be an endlessly inter-
esting answer to have from you, who (& not speaking of
poetry, since that is public & we all know it, variously)
seems to really have something on the ball these days by
way of intellective articulation: what would the list look
like? For instance -- 2 prior lists -- one of SF writ-
ers for L=A= (from Summer ’77): Astle, Balsmayer, Ben-
son, Child, Harryman, Mandel, Pearson, Freilicher (S.D.),
Drucker, G Young. One of people Carole should be in touch
with -- March ’77: Armantrout, BA, Acker, Baracks, CB, CC,
Ray, Davidson, Davies, Dreyer, Faville, Lyn H, Harryman,
Kahn, Lally, Mac Low, Steve, Perelman, Kit R, Rothenberg,
Taggart, Watten, R Waldrop, Wilk, K Young, G Young]

[BA annotates: Let me know also if you can think of pieces

lying around that we might do a precis or excerpting of,
that would seem central.]

Also, here’s a list of some authors w/ books I could con-

ceivably see being discussed in L=A=etc. & wondered if
discussants’ names come to mind:

Nonfiction -- Lacan, Derrida, Lyotard, Althusser, Bar-

thes, Gass, Della Volpe, Hawkes, Culler, Todorov, Sontag,
Jameson, Eagleton, Deleuze, Wilden, etc., etc.

“Writing” -- Acker, Amirkhanian, Antin, Armantrout, Bro-

mige, Benson, Broudy, Cheek, Chopin, Cobbing, Coolidge,

66. Edmund Callis Berkeley, Giant Brains; or, Machines That Think (New York: Wiley,
1949).
342  The Language Letters

Davidson, Davies, De Jong, Dewdney, Drucker, Faville, Fin-

lay, Gillespie, Gitin, Greenwald, Grenier (beyond BW),
Heidsieck, Hejinian, Higgins, Holland, Inman, Kempton,
Mayer, Lally, Lang, Mac Low, Malone, Mandel (though I’m
gonna do a piece on Ency), McCaffery, Meyer, Ockerse,
Reese, Robinson, Roussel, Samperi, Sollers, Sondheim, Tag-
gart, Weiner, Young, plus “classics” -- plus
XYZABCCIAFBIUSACPUSSRNLFABMUSIAIPE.

Maybe to me fire out some notions of “ideal” matches [BA

inserts: if any pop to mind (especially like to get some
new faces, voices)], since that, based on knowledge of
specific undisclosed affinities, sometimes spurs interest.
I mean -- who can do this kind of thing & who will.

Want to make this a success but it feels so Sisyphean.

love, liberation

Bruce

————

69. Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews (2/3/78)

Dear Bruce --

Que es FILM NOIR? Here’s the CC (at lonnnng last!): Lan-

guage #1 (as I’ve already told Chas) is a terrific accom-
plishment -- now that one has the best critical mag in the
country, how does one keep it that way???

Love,

Ron

————
 The Language Letters 343

70. Lapsed Subscription Notification

Appendix 1
Robert Grenier/Bruce Andrews Letters and “Three
Possibilities—for Larry Eigner”

Bruce Andrews to Robert Grenier (8/25/77)

Dear Bob,

Hello -- after too long. Today, back from vacation.

Wanted to say: Ron Silliman, Charles Bernstein & I are

starting a sort of 3 person transcontinental language
collective -- at first, to do a distribution service,
photocopying out of print books and mss. which should be
available. (Ron will write about that.)

As another part of the whole, Charles & I’ll begin --

Fall, from NY -- a bi-monthly newsletter of information and
commentary (complementing magazines like This, Tottel’s,
etc.) focusing on language-oriented writing, or formally
adventurous work & related aesthetic concerns: focused in
that sense, but in order to open things up more publicly
beyond correspondence, break down self-encapsulation of writ-
ers and cross-pollinate local scenes, develop more fully the
lattice-work of those involved in actually related works (the
sort of thing some of us have tried to do with letters).

It’s to go out to about 200 writers, hopefully by subscrip-

tion, approx. 15 sides each issue -- including info. on maga-
zines, and with feature texts (with bibliog. info) on a list
of writers we want to concentrate some greater attention on.

345
346  Appendix 1

///Besides this: a mix of short essays texts letters

statements journal excerpts -- and reviews (esp. of new
books by less well known or younger writers not featured
-- and of related non-fiction).

The features will run about 2-3 per issue (stretching

over the 1st year, in toto), and will include a brief note
on the writer & her/his work, by someone with an interest-
ing slant, short so again not comprehensive (200-600 words)
-- plus, a brief (200-600) word text by each of these writ-
ers, which’ll either be notes on their writing, books, con-
ceptions, aesthetic comments, etc.

The list of these: to give you an idea of the focus of

the magazine: Coolidge, Mac Low, Silliman, Mayer, Watten,
McCaffery, Palmer, Dreyer, the Rothenberg anthologies, Mel-
nick, Waldrop, Raworth, Eigner, DiPalma, Grenier (you!).

//So -- to let you know you are to be included in this,

frontally, as your fine work deserves. We’ve asked Barry
Watten to do the short text on your work, which I think
will be fine. He has agreed, enthusiastically.

I wanted, therefore, to check with you about 2 things:

to see if you’d agree to write a brief text (200-600
words, prose) to accompany information about your book/
cards/etc. in print and the Watten text.

Also, we’d like to ask you to do the accompanying text

on LARRY EIGNER, since we felt you’d be the most appropri-
ate and interesting writer to treat it in such a format.

I hope you can do these two, in either order, and with no

fixed deadlines -- very much hope so -- I think it’s an ideal
format, given the people it will be going out to, and would
really want to have your contribution to make it work right.

We’re not going to put these features in any kind of

hierarchy, but will put 2-3 in each issue, as we receive
 Appendix 1 347

the completed texts. So, whenever the proposed ones by you

& Larry (or the other proposed set, by Barry and by you,
on your own work) are readied, in they go.

To give you an idea of the other texts we have solic-

ited: Baracks on Mac Low; Palmer on Coolidge; Greenwald
on DiPalma; Berrigan on Mayer; McCaffery or Armantrout on
Silliman; Nichol on McCaffery; Lally on Dreyer; Berkson on
Greenwald; Faville on Raworth; McCaffery on Palmer; Sil-
liman on Melnick; Perelman on Watten; DiPalma on Waldrop;
Antin on Rothenberg anthols.

Also, once this is done, want you to know that this con-
tinuing FORUM exists, and we’d always be interested in
seeing work of yours (even work already existing) that
you feel’d be appropriate for the context (anything, as I
said, from book comments to theoretical discussion to non-­
expository essays to letters to journal excerptings: all
but “poems,” for which other outlets exist more readily).

Please let me know when you get a chance, if all is

O.K. and if you can think about doing these short pieces
(admittedly, very short and compacted, at that length).

Really looking forward to hearing from you. Hope I can

make a better effort to keep in touch with you.

Very best,

Bruce

————

Robert Grenier to Bruce Andrews (10/5/77)

Dear Bruce Andrews,

Let me get these off to you w/out further ado -- sent

ms. page so you can see my “method” -- “can’t write prose”
-- “a struggle.”
348  Appendix 1

Piece “on” Keats (meant, of course, for “my” #) probably

much more what you wanted, but Eigner is long, does ramble
& shd serve to start something, hopefully (you’re ready to
go on that #, w/ LE’s piece in) -- like to hear anything
you think re that but please put it out even though so
much a jumble (does try to think re “context” for us all).

Best,

Bob G.

Look me up as you get up this way -- 661-3878.

————

Bruce Andrews to Robert Grenier (10/6/77)

Dear Bob,

Glad to hear with you from you. Barry here, soon

there. Pleased he is doing yr book, and the piece for
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, the now titled newsletter, on yr work.

(Notice you start off your postcard, Dear Bruce Andrews:

I mean, we have met, etc. Havent been out of contact for
that long. Would like to have it as familiar.)

Your positive response on the newsletter much appreciated.

It’s going well, and has generated interest/enthusiasm/
excitement just about wherever the idea is ballooned. Let
me know of people we might get in touch with, to see about
doing a piece or review, that we might not have thought
of. Yes, speak to each other.

We have Larry’s piece, and he tells me you have a copy as

well. So that makes me much intent on getting our text on
him in hand -- and given, I hope, an understanding as to
space limits, which are definite, so that it’s under 600
words. Realize this is constraining, but compacting has its
advantages and we want to keep things at a manageable size
for the format.
 Appendix 1 349

We’ll be planning out & organizing the contents of the

first issue and much of the second around the first
of November, so one deadline thus becomes Halloween.
Of course: do these two (one on LE, one on RG -- to be
accompanied by Barry’s piece on you, as yet undone) as
you can.

Issue #3 of ROOF with work by Ron, myself, etc. from ongo-

ing collaboration, LEGEND, in mail to you soon. Looking
forward to hearing from you, maybe reestablishing a more
active contact after that too.

very best,

Bruce

————

Robert Grenier to Bruce Andrews (10/9/77)

Dear Bruce,

Um, on p. 4 of the Eigner ms., please change “absence

of the presencing of Being” to “presencing of Being as
absence,” -- insofar as such terminology matters not a
whit. Arch-rivals: I’ve always hated philosophy -- far as
it goes though (nowhere, etc.), there’s nothing like it.
Wish I had a mind for it, etc. Otherwise, wish there was
more actual reading of the poems (which is all I do do w/
Eigner -- where’d this other stuff come from?) -- e.g.
“tricks” like slowly pulling blank sheet of paper down the
page & seeing poem “develop” (nothing there until it is
there); looking at whole shape of page first as “Gestalt”
(not reading), finding “connections” among “elements” spa-
tially coordinate then investigating same as language (not
necessarily reading up-down/left-right), then reading poem
as up-down/left-right conventional series w/ spacing scor-
ing temporal process (exactly: e.g. gaps w/in line & line
& stanza breaks, etc. -- distance between words how long
it takes) keeping in mind connections discovered in first
Gestalt reading as you go; reading poem “backward,” last
350  Appendix 1

line first, to see how that fills out “meanings” given

in usual progession & to work to keep whole poem in mind;
reading poem very slowly aloud w/ others interested (hap-
piest times “teaching”), thinking word-by-word & talking
out what’s being said as possible significances show them-
selves to a group reading (not at all to “argue” one vs.
another but to use group mind & memory to build experience
of whole), limiting “free associating” to senses actually
given in the words & using dictionaries; respecting atten-
tion span & waxing/waning in the experience of the work
(e.g., for me, 6-10 poems, so read, is about it, maximally;
most of the time I can’t read at all -- “just like writ-
ing”), since if you’re not on, poems do begin to seem much
the same/blank. Or reading is non-transferable “personal”
practice, maybe, best left unspoken save as listen/look?
(Clearly, you have your own sense of space of page, look-
ing at your work.) Eigner himself, etc., doesn’t seem to
want to talk about his own (what’s his name? -- apparently
German roots in own as eye -- e.g. Look at the Park, On
My Eyes -- & see whole discussion by Hofstadter of “enown-
ment” grounding Heidegger’s thought in boundary 2, winter
1976, come across “co-incidentally” after writing piece
on E: e.g., “Das Eignen -- how, now, shall we read this?
Of course, it is owning. But das Eignen is das Äugen, and
so it must be showing as coming out to be seen or as let-
ting be seen or as seeing or being seen or both. Appearing
is owning and owning is appearing.” Thus, “Das Eignen, the
letting-own-show (as Hofstadter goes on to quote Heidegger
in translation of passage from Unterwegs zur Sprache),

brings what presences and what absences each into

its own; each shows itself, as it is, in this own;
each stays in it in its own way.

This letting-own-show is what quickens within Saying’s

showing. It is the bringer. It quickens Saying as the show
in its showing. Let it be called, says Heidegger, das
Ereignen, the enowning. Enowning, we now realize, can be
what it is only as the showing that quickens language’s
 Appendix 1 351

Saying, and therefore as bringer of what presences and

absences each into its own. . . .” -- pp. 372-3). Eigner
will say, if you show him an old poem & ask, “what did you
mean there,” etc., he’ll look at it & say, “gee, what was
I thinking about . . .” & maybe partially feign “mental
effort” of trying to remember or bend mind back into text
-- which is to say, you read it -- then jump back into
further present talk w/ much relief & “relish,” looking to
see now what. So.

Welcome to print above as postscript/continuation, if you

like. Please do.

Best,

Bob G.

————

Robert Grenier to Bruce Andrews (10/12/77)

Dear Bruce,

Trust you got my two batches by now. Understand why you may
not want the Eigner because “too long,” etc., in which case
please simply return -- instigation toward writing it out
sufficient use to me; on other hand, if you are going to get
into some of this stuff, there’s plenty hasn’t been said --
I’ve been involved w/ E for a “long time,” e.g. -- there’s
been no forum & I think you ought to be prepared to enter-
tain such exchange as may occur w/out starting w/ arbitrary
space limits. Why not assume that those involved think each
word counts, too; then fuck the “format” (save as provi-
sional guide): 400-600 words, in the beginning, insisted
upon’s not only “constraining,” it’s “counter-­
productive!”
I have sufficient faith in “form as an extension of content”
(meaning discovered in the occasion of writing) to say so.
(If problem work on that end, why not do offset & insist
contributors provide “camera-ready copy”?) Such an approach
will yield work under 600 words as well.
352  Appendix 1

Anyway, assuming you may be still interested in articula-

tion of “3 possibilities” as a whole, I’d like to make 1
correction & 1 addition to the Eigner. Correction re “pres-
encing of Being as absence” goes on p. 4 of ms.; addition
to immediately subsequent passage as follows: “ . . . pow-
ers of language ready in the event something shows . . .
i.e., vision in E’s work not ‘crippled’ expression/pro-
jection of ‘his’ condition, soliciting sympathy of those
more mobile & asking for some empathetic projection on our
parts, ‘understanding’ by trying to imagine what it would
might be like to be him -- rather, his condition, until
recently in any case, has provided LE peculiar access to
possibility of showing in writing some part of the situa-
tion in which all now maintains itself as best it can) --
there’s a wonderful sensing &” etc. That’s “enough.” [RG
inserts: (including “postscript/continuation”)]

I like a person’s full name, particularly as a means of

direct address -- it’s your name.

Best,

Bob G.

————

Robert Grenier to Bruce Andrews (10/25/77)

Dear Bruce,

Letters cross (?), but since Barry opined you might

incline to print two-page letter to you re own/eye, please
don’t, as separate piece, since I feel makes sense only as
addendum/commentary rounding out previous blast -- so “all
or nothing,” as you please.

-- respect whatever “limit” for the work yr doing w/ the

organ -- is that way.

Best,

Bob G.
 Appendix 1 353

————

Robert Grenier to Bruce Andrews and Charles Bernstein

(10/30/77)

Dear Bruce & Charles, [RG annotates, with arrow from

“Charles”: address/paper lost somewhere]

Looking at piece on E, I don’t really feel “pos. 2″

can be excerpted, so please don’t print piecemeal -- pass
around etc., & ok to reprint whole through Ron’s xerox
arrangement if that seems useful. Also wish I’d of been
able to “be there,” but didn’t come out to “fit” & so
that’s that.

Look to see whatever results eventually.

Best,

Bob G.
354  Appendix 1

“Three Possibilities—for Larry Eigner”

Unpublished essay by Robert Grenier

“Here forms have possibility.”

-- R.C. [Robert Creeley]

If it is the world’s night, then Larry Eigner is all

right. “Lazy.” Hard to start descriptive statement because
antipathy to that, whereas any result is there already or
not in “work of mine largely unavailable.” Ah, uh, just
talk. I “taught” (ugh) Eigner -- who would be a terrific
teacher, his “range of concerns” & “interest in people,”
speaking & devouring response (he speaks a dialect possi-
ble for students to learn), “not to mention” his “out-
standing achievement,” etc. -- & particularly right now,
when his home base, problematic & useful as that has been
over the years, is tenuous & collapsing -- like his par-
ents are old & he’s in his prime as man of experience &
ought immediately -- like I’m supposed to say in 400-600
words say something about Larry Eigner, another account
-- alright you fuckers, if there’s anybody out there with
any mind for American poetry & equivalent responsibility/
means -- who knows what Eigner has done by this time
because, babies, from him you learned to think & move &
see -- ONE -- make this guy a decent offer -- sound crude?
-- like a place to live & teach in worthy company, & see
if he’s at all interested -- that’s what there is to say,
however graceless & pointlessly (there are others “out of
work”) -- conceive of middlemen in colleges peddling the
goods & poets “like ourselves” in newsletters conversing
-- does anybody have any idea how many little magazines &
sheets of paper are “lying idle” around Larry Eigner’s
parents’ house because people sent them to him, thinking
he might be interested (& he was! -- fucking pattern of
people “starting up a correspondence, coming to visit,”
loading Eigner down with all manner of interesting mate-
rial which he then feels duty bound to deal with & at
least “recycle” -- then these same people [RG inserts:
, including me,] leaving him, like an unfortunate talented
 Appendix 1 355

patient in a solarium whom they have cheered, apparently

incapable of breaking the fix of “his” incapacity by mov-
ing to help him get along in life in common ways that do
“naturally occur” in the development of an individual with
his abilities & “contacts” -- actually by this time a
“well-known, widely respected public figure in the world
of American poetry” -- so that things come to this pass in
his literal circumstance, & a statement like this has to
be made ((with what result)) in another issue devoted to
Larry Eigner) -- HEY! (if there’s been good reason, even,
choice involved in staying in Swampscott previously,
there’s very little possibility there now -- ). // Other-
wise -- TWO -- the most useful descriptive orientation to
the world & language process evidenced in Eigner’s work,
I’d suggest, is that given in Heidegger’s late essays, in
the context of a continuing meditation on the ways things
come into existence & the structure which founds such pos-
sibility (see particularly: Poetry, Language, Thought,
trans. Hofstadter, Harper & Row, 1971), in the light of
which the poem appears as primary instance of what Husserl
called phenomenological investigation, whereby all powers
of intentional act (perception/imagination/recall/
dreaming/talk/intellection, etc. -- pointless to “sort
these out” in Eigner’s writing, where the kinds of atten-
tion are as dense & various as the world they reveal) are
equally engaged in constitution/disclosure of what is for
the time in & through language (insofar as anything can be
said to “be” now) -- a language brought to the structuring
of the “there,” (neither “making it up” nor “copying
nature” but) asking what’s happening & how & hanging in
there with such determination & energy something happens
so “primordially” that-this-that many reading E for the
first time are bored & think “so what” & think “nothing’s
happening,” missing time’s neat frame of event/narrator/
personal significance (societal/writerly conventions
whereby most writing actually covers over presencing of
the world) -- & here E’s isolation from daily speech pat-
terning (with its conventional continuities: grammar), his
relative isolation from the attitudes of das Man & the
356  Appendix 1

palsy which irregularly forces him to “begin again &

again” the language act intentionally have been turned to
advantage -- so that (re Heidegger’s analytic) Eigner
appears as absolute, original American genius who “redeems
us” from the swamp of last-ditch Romanticism either in
form of popular confessional establishment self-oozings &
gossip or as arty-willful underground structural experi-
ment reaction “style” -- both of which are mired in
assumptions of self, self’s experience & action-ability
(E’s work strangely cleared of “personality” -- curse
equal to Usura -- relatively unconcerned with the “I” as
subject of sentence or as much-­
heralded poet’s “voice” --
present rather in the variously engaging intention as
means of “letting be” what thus enters the poem) -- seeing
shift of locus of poem (from Williams’ “speech” or Olson’s
“breath” or muthologos/mouth to, out of the poet’s head
to, page as place thence record of what H describes as
horizon or “clearing” within & through which Dasein as the
power of poetry calls forth that which is therein
“lighted” & built up as what exists just as it is) crucial
to understanding of Eigner’s achievement (& possible
implications of same for later writers), more so than dig-
ging what may be result: obvious, marvelously limber &
precise extension of Olson’s use of the whole space of
page for scoring time in open field composition (that’s
“technique,” re which, the use of space, E has no peer)
-- of course prior instances of a “phenomenological
approach” exist in American writing (interesting to know
exactly what Eigner has read), in many Williams poems [RG
inserts: (e.g. “Flowers by the Sea”)], in Whitman, in mid-
dle-period Stein, & the “theory is there” in pieces, in
senses of directness of presentation/Imagism via Pound
from Fenollosa’s studies of same in the Chinese written
character (also see prose in Williams’ Spring & All &
Stein’s “Poetry & Grammar” in Lectures in America), & most
strikingly perhaps in Zukofsky’s still unfathomed essay,
“An Objective” (which appeared in Poetry in 1931 & disap-
peared), particularly in his discussion of “sincerity,”
from which I excerpt the following: “Writing occurs which
 Appendix 1 357

is the detail, not mirage, of seeing, of thinking with the

things as they exist, and of directing them along a line of
melody. Shapes suggest themselves, and the mind senses and
receives awareness.” “. . . the isolation of each noun so
that in itself it is an image, the grouping of nouns so
that they partake of the quality of things being together
without violence to their individual intact natures. . . .”
“Impossible to communicate anything but particulars --
historic and contemporary -- things, human beings as things
their instrumentalities of capillaries and veins binding
up and bound up with events and contingencies.” And this:
“In poetry the poet is continually encountering the facts
which in the making seem to want to disturb the music and
yet the music or the movement cannot exist without the
facts, without its facts.” -- what belongs to what: lovely
ambiguity of “fact” of the poem & “fact” of the world bound
up with & possessing each other, co-existing, co-determi-
nate -- its -- yet the partially formulated theory, as
prophecy (Pound’s sense of the use of theory, calling for
realization in work to come), finds only partial & occa-
sional realization prior to Eigner’s full shift to daily
actualization of writing things (e.g. though P says “the
natural object is always the adequate symbol,” it’s symbol
& expression of attitude & value through symbol one feels
primarily in The Cantos, thus Romanticism -- very little
is there for its own sake, first, as exactly what takes
place, & thence, unavoidably, also variously symbolic --
though one can “mis-read” detail in P for its value as
such, its “significance” unknown or forgotten) -- & of
course there is a lot of differently interesting, “non-­
phenomenological” expressionist statement in Eigner (e.g.
political poems, poems written in response to somebody’s
work or upon or from some occasion; these are clearly
indicated by the presence of the poet speaking, normal
syntax, subject under discussion & occasionally sentimen-
tal tone): he’s tried everything that’s come to hand & is
as hungry as anybody for the limited community to be
gained by participating in available conventions -- never-
theless, prevailing mood of work is somber, resolute,
358  Appendix 1

isolate, waiting/anticipatory (while presencing such as is

given it to see), there’s a sense of deprivation which is
not personal but “world-wide” (H says earth undergoing
withdrawal of the gods, absence of the presencing of Being
[RG emends to read: presencing of Being as absence], such
that best a poet can do, in effect, is to keep the chan-
nels open, powers of language ready in the event something
shows . . . [RG inserts: i.e., vision in E’s work not
“crippled” expression/projection of “his” condition,
soliciting sympathy of those more mobile & asking for some
empathetic projection on our parts, “understanding” by
trying to imagine what it might be like to be him --
rather, his condition, until recently in any case, has
provided LE peculiar access to possibility of showing in
writing some part of the situation in which all now main-
tains itself as best it can]) -- there’s a wonderful sens-
ing & presentation of the “great forces of nature” in E’s
poems (wind, starlight, sun shining off the water, sea-
sons) existing in a measureless distance of [RG inserts:
void] cosmos, over against which/inside which every ele-
ment near enough to be perceived (squirrel, clothesline)
or conceivably imagined is actually placed in a totally
strange (“yet familiar”) present page & densely correlated
with the other powerful elements in a physics of discourse
in which every thing (loud or quiet, static or sweeping
by) is “pulsing with energy” & somehow aching throughout,
like aching for . . . & all of this “life” is given
(that’s it) & held in the mind on the page -- “too much, &
not enough,” as E keeps interpolating, in cards & letters,
keep ’em going -- anyway, Eigner’s writing largely ful-
fills & answers description of poetry Heidegger ventures
(seemingly better than his Romantic & late Romantic/
Expressionist examples from the German tradition, Hölder-
lin & Trakl) -- E’s poems have even less than Williams’ to
do with “American small-town life” (e.g. in seaside Swamp-
scott, Mass.) save as existential locus for mind so on &
at work on things, though it may happen here -- flying
saucers?? -- // THREE -- question remains whether even
“American” language tuned to such finenesses of
 Appendix 1 359

registration & articulation (another story: simply densely

reading the poems, what I don’t do here, that’s the
“cake”) -- even with such a “syntax,” open/radically con-
ceived as one & the same with the very (“real”) shape/
organization of objects on a page -- can presence any
other Being & value, or must go down with the ship as fin-
ished (“Indo-European”) record of its (“Greek”) metaphysic
& experience -- very generally, is there any “post-modern”
literature, to date? -- what’s the point of recommending
possibility of teaching literature & creative writing, or
of suggesting possible relevance (for Eigner & the rest of
us) of “heroic” conception of poet’s mission in quest of
Being, if there is (?) little possibility of anything else
taking place in language as we know & live it? -- who’s
getting anywhere, there, really, in contemporary American
writing (granted that there’s nowhere to get except back
to the present with variously altered & renewed attention,
writing, & that the “new” is typically more decoration)?
-- is it done, & should one therefore simply “get a job”
and/or “have fun,” as we do & don’t, catch as catch can
(+ join Burroughs in his efforts to destroy verbal/image
track, that “virus,” before it does more damage -- what
does B propose for writing?) -- Larry Eigner’s work in
“open field form” (paralleling that of Creeley and Ker-
ouac) now seems complete, methodologically, notwithstand-
ing further notable workings out (as Stein’s & Williams,’
e.g., were at no point in their lives) -- “my generation,”
in the last 10 years of active possibility, has shown lit-
tle sign of “significant response” to “challenge” of
“major figures” of “early 20th Century American Litera-
ture” (Pound, Williams, Stein) -- nothing “like” Olson &
Zukofsky -- no work of the order of Kerouac’s, Ginsberg’s,
Creeley’s or Eigner’s anyway yet appearing (with possible
exception of Clark Coolidge) -- e.g., after the fact, his-
torians might “derive” Eigner’s inquiry from the method in
Tender Buttons (whether or not E has read Husserl, Heideg-
ger, Stein or Donald Sutherland on Stein: there was a con-
tinuity of problem/development/new possibility implicit in
the writing of some born as late as 1927) -- whereas, now,
360  Appendix 1

it’s a bleak, blank time for contemporary American poetry

which (despite the proliferation, N.E.A. grants, etc.), in
terms of something other, or further, scarcely “exists”??
-- following H one might say writers specifically seem to
have abandoned awareness, even, of the basic problems of
writing -- of what words are & can do to wrest truth from
concealment in daily appearances -- of the conventional
nature of current conventions (so that one not confuse
writing with adequate replication of work of current fig-
ure X) -- of the strangeness of language & world & the
effort & luck involved in gaining any coexistence of the
two in a voice, on a wall, on a page -- & this with the
example of LE “before us” -- how is this possible? -- [RG
inserts: period of waiting, “silence,” etc., then wither-
ing away of that, even: plain doom?? -- ] it’s “worse”
than [the] ’30s (subversion of invention/imagination for
sociopolitical interest), “more deadly” than the Kenyon
Review establishment of the ’40s -- all of which seems
actually to have consolidated in periodicals like the
American Poetry Review (though why single that out?),
beefed itself up into a complete betrayal & ignorance of
the possibility of the invention of a language true to the
conditions of an American reality initiated by Whitman,
becoming articulate (seemingly as a necessity) in WCW &
Stein & apparently beginning to “flower,” etc., in a burst
of actualization in the late ’40s & early ’50s & -- who’s
“working on that”? -- Clark Coolidge, are you working on
that (you’ve got “an incredible talent”), or is the whole
issue of such possibility part of the apparatus of a cul-
ture you reject (along with “meaning,” etc.), such that
you’re content to play around with verbal combinations
(words as material) with the supreme indifference of the
true Romantic, acting on the stuff at will/imposing form,
in the splendid isolation of the Berkshires, living out
your life in the company of friends [RG inserts: & “doing
your thing”] (now wait a minute, Bob) -- like action
painting is “nowhere” as a model for writing, establishes
nothing, has only the “life” of its act & act’s leavings
-- if you don’t want to “discuss it,” take this rather as
 Appendix 1 361

“personal” affront (or base compliment, like I envy,

right, the “high order” verbal intelligence/energy in work
of yours I’ve heard & seen) -- snub me, I’ll eat half of
an old baloney & cheese -- what say? -- e.g., any possi-
bility “through” or bounce off Eigner, for your writing?
-- or is there a way to the world through listening to the
possible combinations of the elements of language & fool-
ing with these, like alchemy -- taking the world of lan-
guage (“its facts,” Zukofsky) as the place wherein Being
may now presence (stuff & nonsense, will fooling itself?)
-- in this light (words themselves as “objects” of inten-
tional acts), what’s happening in “A-22” & “A-23”? -- &
Creeley, in “Numbers,” thinking words as number, was
surely on the verge of calling things into being (or just
the same old things, “number” equally part of the finished
metaphysic of the too well known, concealing by showing
everything the same 10 ways? -- beautiful sense in H of
disclosure in language being at once a concealing of the
“truth of Being,” & every writer knows, “from experience,”
what that means --

. . . .

-- I don’t know, I get bored with the rhetoric & the

descriptions, figure I need a good night’s sleep, a new
girl friend (next time, forever), another trip to Cal-
ifornia, maybe -- maybe I should go back where I came
from, to Minnesota, make money, go canoeing & give up the
whole thing -- it’s against my whole optimistic way of
natively viewing things -- receding hairline?/grow a beard
-- “relax” -- my mother’s frequent word was “normal” --
what’s the “big problem,” after all, anyway -- ???

-- Robert Grenier
Cambridge, Mass.
Oct. 5/77
Appendix 2
The Pacifica Interview
SUSAN HOWE WITH BRUCE ANDREWS AND CHARLES BERNSTEIN

363
364  Appendix 2

The Pacifica Interview

(The following is a transcript of an interview of the editors by Susan Howe, taped

in March 1979, and broadcast over WBAI-FM, Pacifica Radio in New York City.)

CB: L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E came out of our interest as writers of poetry in

having discussion of works that interested us and of issues of politics
and philosophy and other arts that seemed related to that work. A lot of
what we’ve done is to allow the active kind of energy that goes into writ-
ing poetry to pervade the discussion that goes on in the magazine, so
for someone who wasn’t used to that it might even seem like the reviews
or comments or critical articles were poems. That is to say, there is no
standard expository style used, nor a standard style of punctuation for
that matter. And the articles just take off right in the middle, assuming,
very often, some knowledge of the terms of an ongoing discussion. It’s
the kind of publication that could only be put out by people actively
engaged in writing. Although what constitutes being actively engaged in
writing is an open question we’re interested in exploring.

SH: Do you feel that there is a specific group of people that are working
along lines that interest you?

CB: I think that there are traditions within American literature, within
poetry, within twentieth-century art, as well as a number of contem-
porary writers that together form a matrix of active interest. All those
things seem like confluences. As a magazine, we have a few hundred
subscribers, we have about 200 different people who’ve written for us, a
number writing numerous pieces, and this obviously defines a certain
area of interest. There are writers and magazines that Bruce and I share
a commitment to, are interested in writing about and talking about. But
we don’t exhaust the limits of our interests in the magazine.

SH: It seems to me that similar dialogue to that going on in

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E could have been found in Artforum when it was
really going strong in the late 60s or early 70s, and a little bit in October
magazine. . . . I’m not talking about the critics, but the works that they
are writing about.

BA: I think that specifically the kind of work that I’m most interested in
 Appendix 2 365

deals with questions that have been dominant in other advanced arts
in the century and have to do with what is customarily thought of as
the modernist project in those other arts—that is, an exploration of
the intrinsic qualities and possibilities of the medium in which the art
takes place. And that is an exploration that’s been carried on in all the
arts, and it’s been carried on in the recent critical work related to most
of the other arts. Now, I think there are any number of sub-traditions
and active traditions of writing that explore some of those same issues
having to do with the nature of the medium which from our point of
view is language. The medium of writing is not some concocted verse
tradition that comes down to us through academic discourse and what
people are taught in school and what book reviewers in The New York
Times tell us that poetry is all about; it has to do with writing as an
exploration and a presentation of the possibilities of language. And
that exploration has gone on in the writing throughout the century in a
number of different traditions. It’s something a number of poets around
the country and in Europe now talk about but most of that discussion
has taken place privately in correspondence, people’s journal writing,
etc. We’ve all been engaged in that project in the mail and in conversa-
tion for years and are trying in a small way by doing the magazine to get
some of that discourse out into a more public realm. That way the par-
ticipation can be somewhat less restrictive—where it isn’t just a matter
of what particular person you happen to be close friends with or hap-
pen to have access to through the mail that you carry on this wonderful
dialogue with, but to get some of that out in a more public way, to build
a sense of community, to some extent, to get some of the issues clarified,
to get the information around in a somewhat easier fashion, and to try
to do it ourselves as writers, rather than constantly having these ques-
tions mediated by some particular critical establishment, which I think
is one of the reasons why writing, if it has lagged behind some of the
other arts in certain ways, that’s one of the reasons. Because the discus-
sion about writing has been largely carried on by conservative English
professors, in the United States.

CB: But, of course, it’s not writing that has lagged behind the other arts but
rather that people’s awareness of the work has lagged behind. There is
an enormous repression of knowledge about even the American tradi-
tions of writing. Lots of the important work done in the early part of the
century remains far more obscure than comparable works in the visual
366  Appendix 2

arts, which has had a well-funded critical industry to sell innovation as

the basis of creating ever-higher market values not only for new work
but for the early innovations which make up their traditions. So the
public climate about writing is much more conservative, the interest-
ing work is much less visible. In the fifties and sixties most of the work
published by the commercial and university presses represented a very
minor and not very interesting kind of work that involved the most
reactionary possible interpretation of the work of people like Pound,
and even Williams. For a lot of people, who may read or even write for
the art magazines, that’s all they see of poetry.

SH: It’s interesting to me because, for instance, you had Black Mountain
which produced an incredible amount of interesting writing and music
and visual art. The visual artists that came out of that now have a tre-
mendous amount of critical approval in America—they are taught in
the schools, they are in museums, they are written about in the New
York Times. But when it comes to the writers, this has not been the
case.

CB: There’s been enormous sums of money involved in the promotion of

the visual arts, while most of the money in the poetry world is univer-
sity related and goes, by and large, to a very restricted, a very boring,
kind of work that relates more to the lives and sensibilities of people
who teach in academic institutions, which, not simply to dismiss it,
does have a certain popularity because of this context. Anyway, poetry
is difficult to understand; in the time it takes to read one poem and just
get the most initial hit you could look at a number of paintings, not that
you would be able to fully understand them, of course. But the society is
more geared to a certain kind of superficial consumption of art, which
is hard to do with a poem, especially one that has any formal com-
plexity: it’s not right there to be seen, whether or not it’s understood.
Certainly, the popularity of someone like Jackson Pollock doesn’t nec-
essarily come from an intimate understanding of the kind of textures he
created and his ability, as they say, to achieve an opticality in his works
and overall nonfiguration that you might think of from a formalist
point of view. But rather, the fact that his work is sold for a lot of money
and so on, that you can buy a little snapshot of one of the paintings or a
postcard and consume the image. Poetry is much harder to consume at
that level. It’s hard to get a sense of what the poem is at all. There’s not
 Appendix 2 367

really an image. Either it looks the same as all poetry has looked with
stanzas and so on, or it looks like words scattered on a page. It’s hard to
get that immediate hit off of what it is; it’s missing a certain immediate
flash some of the other arts have.
Following up on something Bruce said, I’m interested in looking
at the tradition of writing as something broader than simply the verse
tradition or anything like that, since this gets away from a more central
point for me, which does not separate poetry out from other forms of
writing, which is the exploration of how language shapes the way we see
the world—how we come to see the world in terms of language. Lots of
the poetry I find most exciting and most beautiful gives a sense of how
language creates the world; it lets you see the world and the actual for-
mation of the world more closely. So there’s an affinity here with critical
thought, and to Marxist thought. I mean I think the work can both pro-
vide a social critique and be a poem that stands on its own. Sometimes
the categorization of writing into its genres is misleading; often these
genres are no more than format distinctions, as in the case of prose
format, which really cannot distinguish between poetry and what is so
often called “prose.” If you look at the whole range of writing that goes
on, just look at different newspapers, different kinds of technical infor-
mation manuals, and all the other types of writing that get produced in
our society, and look at them with an eye to what kind of a quality of
world is being created by it. This is where the work of Burroughs and
Mac Low in the fifties and sixties fits in and is so important. Cutting up
“found” language, juxtaposing, rearranging, to see what kinds of results
you get. That you can deal with language as this material we are per-
vaded by, which we as writers take as the material with which we do our
work: how we ourselves are created out of the ways this material is used.
And that entails seeing language not as a transparency, not as some-
thing which simply dissolves as you get a picture of the world in focus,
so that, in reading a text, you are hardly aware of the language at all. I
am more and more interested in becoming conscious of language when
I write and in reading work which is conscious of its qualities as lan-
guage, and in that sense not trying to eliminate idiosyncracies or other
kinds of things that prevent just using the language as a disappearing
act that gives you the world on the other side. Which is basically a way
of consuming, of making the world into a commodity you just con-
sume, rather than seeing how the world is actually constructed through
language.
368  Appendix 2

SH: Are there any basic texts that you go back and back to—just to give lis-
teners some idea of where you are coming out of?

BA: You are talking about traditions in the other arts, you are talking about
the Dadaists, the Russian Futurists, you are talking about different
moves in the tradition of the novel, you are talking about different
things going on in the visual arts. For me, things like jazz and improvi-
satory music in the sixties and seventies have been very important. The
new music coming out of Cage and the traditions he harkens back to.
You have this confluence of all these different streams, all these different
traditions, most of which have been shuttled to the side of what’s con-
sidered important in writing. And it isn’t so much that we’re heroically
trying to bring all these things together. I mean these are the kinds of
mixes of different traditions that many of the writers are interested in
or cut into at some point. All of these traditions, plus others that don’t
come to mind as quickly, are operating in the writing of the people
we’re concerned with, so the discussion sometimes centers around
some of these sub-traditions, some of those active streams of work.

SH: Some of those are original traditions, I mean obviously it’s better to go
back to the sources like Melville or Thoreau, but it seems to me that
there has been a re-interpretation of those basic texts by some mod-
ern criticism that for me has shaped my thinking, like S/Z by Barthes,
which profoundly affected my way of looking at different texts.

BA: Right, but did it get us all to go back and read Balzac, that’s the ques-
tion. It’s a question academics don’t usually confront.

SH: It could certainly get me to go back and redo it a little bit. I mean, I
think the Freudian thing too, Freud has been very important.

BA: I think it’s true in the last 10 or 20 years you have a wide range of
activity going on in the critical community. Most of it is not so much
centered around writing, although that is more the case now in France
and with some of the trendier English Departments in the US that have
picked up on some of the French theorists. But you also have whole
ranges of philosophical traditions. You have the whole Marxist tradition
of ways of looking at social phenomena as material, as production, as
constrained by underlying principles operating at the social system level
 Appendix 2 369

and the question of how that affects our sense of distance from language
versus our sense of involvement and participatory involvement in it.
Not just as something that we consume, something that is out there as
this “window on the world” that we’re supposed to simply pass through
and therefore come to accept and be socialized into: some particular
way of looking at the world which essentially is one of acceptance, a
kind of glassy-eyed consumptive way of dealing with the world instead
of seeing that in fact language is this vessel or this environment that
we operate in which shapes our world, shapes our sense of ourselves,
which is also incredibly constrictive. Something that I think a lot of this
writing tends to try to undercut is the notion of a sovereign self and
a sovereign subject as the center of meaning in a text—which I think
again is not only a limited and limiting notion, but a notion that derives
from the operation of an oppressive social system that we all are living
under. To some extent we are living out society’s alienating qualities
without being encouraged to look at what these qualities are, to see how
alienation is related to, say, traditions of representation in the arts or
in writing, how all those things operate together. So you have people
working in these areas as writers, and you also have people doing seri-
ous thinking and conceptualizing about these things, and both of these
have influenced my own way of looking at what writing is and what the
possibilities for writing can be, both socially and on the page. So, in that
sense, you have a much messier field of vision here in terms of what
seems important and what seems worth thinking about.

CB: When Bruce or I will talk about a political or Marxist, specifically a

Marxist perspective, it is different than the traditional sense of social-
ist realism which I find fairly abhorrently limited as a view of what
art could be. Obviously, to people who support socialist realism as
what Marxist art would be or political art would be or what socialist
art would be, the work that we do might seem terrifically privatized,
individualized, abstract and all kinds of bad things, I’m sure. I think
that what political art does, or art that has political concerns, let me
put it that way because I don’t know what it would mean to say polit-
ical art, art that has the kind of concerns that Marx himself had and
that in general people that have radical social views have, is to look at
society and how values are constituted within it, how the world comes
to mean things, how labor is always removed from an understanding
of what a product is, and so on. To try to bring these things out, look
370  Appendix 2

at them, and make it more apparent in the writing. So that what I am

interested in doing is stopping the sense of transparency in language,
that language is this neutral thing that people don’t have a part in.
Because it is people that make up language and change language and
in that way change reality. If you accept the concept that language is a
relatively fixed system for describing the world, which is essentially a
notion that academic concepts of writing have and share with socialist
realist senses of writing, you have given over what I think is the major
area of struggle, which is the control over the constitution of reality.
Let me give an example of that, which would be spelling. The idea that
there should be uniform spelling and uniform diction has been recently
combatted by a lot of people favoring more acceptance of Black English
and dialects in school. These are very revealing arguments to hear about
language. Language is not something that exists in stasis and it doesn’t
have any intrinsic uniformity. The idea that everyone should spell
things the same, not that I don’t think it’s a crucial social survival skill
to know correct spelling, but the idea is still based on an elitist notion
of writing as being something for an aristocracy who have cohesive
social views and so on. In Shakespeare’s time people didn’t even spell
their own names the same way. There was that sense that language was
much more in flux, much more able to be shaped. The more and more
you move to the concept that subject/verb/object sentences, the way
I’m talking now, is somehow clearer, the more and more you move to
accept what almost might be called an imperial sense of what clarity is,
that language can imperially just dissolve and give you the world and
that the world really is correct spelling, that a table really is t-a-b-l-e.
That in fact different idioms, different ways, confusions, what are called
idiosyncrasies of diction, actually indicate a different world, different
perceptions, different kinds of values. And that rather than try to bring
everybody over to a white Western framework for what the world is
and for describing the world, it is important to understand that every
difference in spelling, every “unclarity,” every “awkwardness” means
something if a person uses it, and that you can read it and it tells you
something, and to value that, to value the fact that language evolves
and changes. And that people can begin to take control of the language
and changing the language and not having this enormous insistence on
no mistakes, no typographical errors, no spelling mistakes, no gram-
matical errors, parallel structure, all the things that construct “a” world
but not “the” world. For if you buy that it’s the world you are buying
 Appendix 2 371

an enormous amount which I think is basically related to managerial

control of this society by large capital interests. You buy a conception of
reality, that the world really does exist in this way as described by these
clear expository sentences, and it doesn’t. The world exists in the ways
we create it and we can learn how to see the world in different ways and
a lot of cracks in that system by beginning to explore alternative meth-
ods of writing and thinking and talking.

BA: And reading and listening.

SH: Editing is very important in that context. When you are given an
anthology of poetry in school, you have the standard spelling. But if you
go back to a really well-edited book of 18th century poetry or of 17th
century metaphysical poets and see the way they spelled, it opens things
up. Those poems just jump alive off the page because of the different
spelling. So that’s terribly important when it comes to editing. Look
at what they did to Emily Dickinson. Her poems for years appeared
in dribs and drabs; they were slowly coming out but with the dashes
removed and the capitals all made small.

CB: In the name of uniformity and standardization of language.

SH: Yes, but half the life was there in what she was trying to do with her
dashes and capitals.

BA: You are being encouraged when this sort of thing happens to take for
granted the larger social context in which everybody is operating. You
are talking about active writing, yet you are also talking about a speech
situation out of which these norms of clarity come. I mean that’s what
this clarity is supposed to be all about. But what happens in a speech sit-
uation is that you’re forced or encouraged to take for granted the context
in which you are embedded. That’s one of the things I am interested in
trying to undercut—it’s that failure to recognize what the system is that
everyone is working within. But people can come to see language first of
all as a changing system, as this system that has its own rules and its own
norms and its own constraints, pretty well institutionalized, that shapes
not only the writing or reading that goes on within it but also the people
who are precipitated out of it: the whole idea of subjects and bodies com-
ing out of it. If they can not only recognize the limitations and constraints
372  Appendix 2

which the system provides, but also begin to think of writing as a practice
within the system, a practice that is displaying the system, problematizing
it, making it look like something that has developed historically, that you
don’t have to take it for granted, that you can make moves within it, that
you can create changes within it, then you can take control of that. You no
longer have to think of the system as this apparatus of social control that
we’re all going to be subjected to all the time. So to that extent I think of
the way writing uses language as a paradigm for how people can operate
within this larger social system, and that’s what I think are the broader
political implications of some of these kinds of writing we’ve been
interested in. It’s not a question of mobilizing the masses to form large
majorities that can take power in some straightforwardly political sense;
it’s the question of analyzing, critiquing, problematizing the structure of
power itself. This isn’t a question of the state; you’re not talking about the
government or even just about the capitalist economic apparatus. You’re
talking about power relations that exist between individuals, between
systems and individuals within them, between norms and relationships
and patterns of activity. All of these things are what create social control.
If people can come to a greater understanding of how those systems
operate and how change within those systems can operate—whether it’s
language or whether it’s neighborhood insurrection or whatever you’re
talking about—then that’s a political dimension to this work which I
think is going to be undercut (and this is I think the sad part) . . . will
be undercut by demanding the work take on a more obvious or visible
political content. Because what happens there is that the people who are
touted generally as being so-called political writers or political poets tend
to be ones that take for granted those larger systems and structures within
which language operates. They do make certain points, but too often the
only points that get across are the ones which can plug into this whole
emphasis on customary expository writing or normal semantic relation-
ships or how things normally operate—certain points which people can
easily consume.

SH: The classic example I think of a kind of tragedy of idealism in the way
you are talking about is the one that occurred in Russia right after the
Revolution. The Constructivists . . .

BA: . . . the Futurists, the dreamers of progress. They had the dream and
they saw some of it fulfilled and things did change. . . .
 Appendix 2 373

CB: The recent show of “The Russian Avant-Garde, 1910–1930” in Los Ange-
les and Washington was an incredible presentation of how significant
this work was, how vital the spirit of that work still is, and how devas-
tatingly things had changed by 1930. Obviously there was a movement
in the Soviet Union, not to go into the history of the Soviet Union, but
the move toward centralism and toward crushing idiosyncrasies and so
on is related to what we are talking about. Now, I think that the political
issues and what is the best kind of party formation and so on are diffi-
cult questions, and certainly there have to be different levels of change,
certain things that have to be sacrificed for other things. But these gen-
eral issues we are bringing out, of qualities of human life that I think
art has always explored, and I think art with a political perspective can
continue to explore, have to do with things existing for themselves and
not simply as instrumentalities for something else. And that’s why I
question the idea of what political poetry is. Poetry writing by people
who have a social and political commitment is the way I would rather
put it. Because in working on writing I am interested in creating things
which aren’t simply vehicles for something else. I’m not interested in
teaching someone something per se, I’m not interested in illustrating
a point per se, I’m not interested in having anecdotes or any of these
things per se. I’m interested in creating things that exist on their own,
for themselves, by themselves. That’s why I object to this issue of trying,
when you write, to create a language that has no sense of itself, that
almost tries to make you forget that there is any kind of language there,
because it does take away from the integrity of the work. And I think art
has always been involved with self-sufficiency and non-instrumentality.
What that ends up being in some strange way is something that is a pro-
cess which is to some degree not mediated to as great an extent by alien-
ation. That is to say, some bit of wholeness or wholesomeness that can
exist in the society that we’re in, that isn’t completely permeated by the
structures of alienation.

BA: The demand that political writing be instrumental, I think, is some-

thing that bothers me in the same way that the demand that writing per
se be instrumental bothers me. That is, the sense that it’s instrumental
to giving you this hypnotized gaze at these things that are so-called “out
there” in the so-called “real world” and that writing is a mere replica-
tion of that real world, that writing is not a production. What people
don’t always see, or what I’m interested in seeing myself and exploring,
374  Appendix 2

is how the writing actually creates that world out there. That it’s an act
of production and it’s not simply an act of transcription of some pre-
viously constituted world that’s all set up out there so that all we have
to do is live in it. I mean, we don’t just live in this world. We make the
world, whether we are given the power to do so in a really active way
or not. We are following along certain patterns which constitute that
world and we do that through our language, we do that through our
consciousness. So anything which is going to explore the way in which
that consciousness and that writing is in fact a production and there-
fore can be changed becomes more interesting. I mean, it’s a historical
phenomenon, it’s not some fated naturalistic thing that we have to take
for granted like the way we take the weather for granted. We’re talking
about how people live in society and what they can produce, and that
gives me greater excitement about work that presents itself both as a
production and also as something that is self-sufficient, that has a pres-
ence in and of itself which is interesting, which can generate a compli-
cated emotional impact or possibility to me as a reader, on other people
who would read the work, rather than the impact simply being gener-
ated by the hypnosis of looking at some outside world that’s previously
constituted. Or rather than the possibilities being a stylish deduction
from the existing social codes. The thing that’s exciting is the materiality
of language and the partial self-sufficiency and partial outreach of lan-
guage right there on the page, not this idea that you’re essentially asleep
while you’re reading and being propelled into some nether world off the
page where all the action is.

CB: It’s in that sense that I think writing can be an important epistemolog-
ical investigation, because the objects, what makes up the objects of
the world that people talk about—tables, chairs, bosses, workplaces,
geographical locations—are not things one takes for granted when
one is writing. Those are things that one calls into question, one sees
how they are made up and how they are constituted, how the world is
actually divided and created constantly by the language that we use.
By the sentence structure that we use. And that to simply make syntax
a non-existent (that is, already determined) structure is to accept the
objects of the world as constituted by the media, by the school systems,
by the general ideology that is most prevalent. There certainly is a lot
of truth to the reality of the world as we normally perceive it, but those
objects are not the absolutes of reality. They are constantly constituted
 Appendix 2 375

in language and by language and through language, conditioned by

language, and it’s in that sense that writing which doesn’t take for
granted that it is describing things clearly but rather that is interested
in density and opacity—which is certainly something that would strike
readers of our magazine, that this stuff isn’t “clear,” I don’t know what
you are talking about, it seems fuzzy or non-expository or like the
poetry which is dense and opaque. That’s where that comes out of, it’s
that interest in not accepting the objects of the world as given.
Appendix 3
Contemporary Interview
MICHAEL GOLSTON AND MATTHEW HOFER WITH BRUCE ANDREWS
AND CHARLES BERNSTEIN

This interview, derived from two separate conversations with Bruce Andrews
and Charles Bernstein, has been edited and combined into a single document.

On Poetic Thinking and Possibilities of Contact in the Early to Mid-1970s

BA: There’s not a lot of thinking going on in poetry, let’s face it.

MG: But in poetics there is.

BA: Well, I don’t know, in the beginning it’s stuff in your notebooks—the
primary place is in notebooks—or, in my case, it was often in defending
my work to editors who were puzzled by it—

MG: In letters.

BA: —in letters, yes. My only contact with the poetry world when I was a
political science graduate student (1971–75) was magazines. If I didn’t
have an address for somebody, I wasn’t able to write to them; so I would
submit. I was very aggressive about submitting my work everywhere. I
was sending work out to dozens and dozens and dozens of magazines
during that whole period, and that was a lot of it: an editor would ask
some questions, and you’d expand. So when I’m digging through my
early 1970s correspondence, a lot of it is with nobodies who happen to
be editing some small magazine or contentious discussions with more
conservative poets I was friendly with.

CB: Ron was the first person from those who would become my poetry
friends with whom I had a correspondence. I wasn’t in touch with many
poets in 1973: no one from college, no old friends. At Simon Fraser

377
378  Appendix 3

University, near Vancouver, I met Robin Blaser. And I wrote to Jerry

Rothenberg, who put me in touch with Ron. Bruce and I met in 1975—it
was unbelievable because I had been reading Habermas’s Knowledge
and Human Interests and the Frankfurt School, and he, of course, is
phenomenally knowledgeable about this area of work. Here was a poet
who had read and was interested and could understand what the Frank-
furt School was doing, what the dispute between Gadamer and Haber-
mas was about, let’s say. I’m not sure that particular one was Bruce’s
thing, but that was a great interest of mine, early on. I think Steve was
the first person who mentioned Derrida to me, in 1975–76. Steve was
much more gung ho for Derrida than was I, but nonetheless that was
the first that I’d heard about him. There was a burgeoning group. I
didn’t know many of them at the time, but in retrospect you can see the
connections starting to be made. Ron always said one finds readers one
at a time, and it did seem to work that way.

BA: We were outsiders on the publishing front, other than a couple mag-
azines by the time we get to 1974–75—later than that even—that were
seemingly dedicated to experimental poetry. Up until then there’s noth-
ing. There was 0 TO 9, there was some of the things that Kostelanetz
did back in the early 1970s, but there were no magazines dedicated to
experimental writing, experimental poetry. So we would always end up
as the fringe figures in some magazine that was more conventional. I
used to get the directory of little magazines and notice who’s publishing
Eigner, who’s publishing Coolidge, and, if they were, then, “Oh, OK,
I’ll send them my work, I’ll send them my work instead of buying the
magazine” [laughter]. No, no, they’re just instrumentalized places to get
your work published. And that didn’t change much—in fact, it’s never
changed much.

On the Origin of Language-Centered Collaboration

CB: Jerome Rothenberg responded to a letter I wrote him in 1973 and said,
“Be in touch with Ron Silliman.” Then Ron included something I said
in my letter to him in The Dwelling Place, the 1975 mini-anthology
that was in Alcheringa. Ron had already finished the anthology when I
wrote him, but in his commentary he mentions my term for Gertrude
Stein’s writing—“wordness.” So that was a crucial point of contact.
After that I had an extensive correspondence with Ron. That was the
 Appendix 3 379

fundamental correspondence with another poet of my generation. The

next year, after we moved from Vancouver to Santa Barbara, Susan
and I drove up to San Francisco, and I knocked on the door of Ron’s
house, where he was living with Barry Watten, and Ron came down
to meet me, and then he took me to a nearby bar where Tom Clark’s
younger brother John was playing. I never liked bars with loud music,
but there it was. We could hardly hear one another. Barry, in the first
volume of The Grand Piano, recounts the story of my knocking on the
door:

I do not remember the day N- visited the apartment Ron and I

shared at Seventeenth and Missouri in 1974. There was someone at
the door. Who was that, I asked? Oh, some guy who came up from
Santa Barbara because he was interested in my work. What do you
think of him? I’m not sure. What could such a visitation have meant
to either of us at the time?67

He doesn’t use my name—he calls me “N-.”

MG: Because, he’s . . . ?

CB: I can’t give a motivation. To use a title of one of Barry’s books, I am

under erasure. He goes on to talk about “a moment of othering.” It
would be very difficult for anybody reading The Grand Piano to realize
that I was that “some guy who came up from Santa Barbara.” Barry
continues the passage with an anecdote about meeting “N-” again in
New York in 1976—and our having a heated discussion that turned on
whether my writing could be compared with his. I held that it could be.
He disagreed.68

67. See Barrett Watten, “VII,” in The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiog-
raphy, San Francisco, 1975–80, part 3 (Detroit:, MI: Mode A, 2006), 100–101. In his section
of the memoir, Watten provides names of more than two dozen people who were present
at the 1976 meeting in New York. He also mentions L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E by name here,
contrasting it to the concept of language in poetry: “What is the relation of this moment to
the concept of language? The moment when the turn to the other becomes one of totalizing
abstraction, evidently” (ibid.).
68. See also Bernstein’s letter to Watten of July 17, 1977.
380  Appendix 3

On Groups, Communities, and the Problems of (Delayed)

Collaboration across (Great) Distances

MG: Here again, the problem is this group designation.

CB: Yeah, although I will always have this inconsistently anti-group view,
and I was not alone in expressing skepticism about group formation at
the time. I think on the West Coast, the poets—

MG: Functioned more like a group.

CB: Yes. It was a significantly larger social context. In New York, our num-
bers were small, but we also felt close to Steve McCaffery in Toronto
and poets in Washington, DC. You could say we were engaging in, as I
say now, midrashic antinomianism: there was no doctrine. Affinity and
resonance brought us into conversation, not doctrine.

MH: Which is why the letters make so much sense; if you can’t be local, you
can’t be a group.

BA: I don’t remember corresponding with anybody in New York, other than
submitting poems to magazines. I didn’t have the sense that there was
anybody who was poetically inclined in a discursive, expository way,
who I really wanted to be in touch with to talk about these things. It was
like we were starting something new—we had something new going on.
There was a couple of magazines, there was Tottel’s that Ron was doing.
There was This. Hills was a little bit later. Big Deal was the first magazine
in New York that was relevant to us, and that was edited by Barbara
Baracks, who moved to New York I think in 1973 or 1974. She’s one of
the first poets I met because she came through Cambridge to meet me.
And we had a little correspondence I think.

CB: In San Francisco, the poets I knew had a sense of being recognized
players in the culture of the city. They were more visible—when I went
to the Bay Area in those days, I felt like I was somebody instead of the
nobody I was in New York. Come on, let’s face it (to echo Budd Schul-
berg’s great lines). My friends in the Bay Area had made a big splash
there—their contemporaries and the older generation of poets noticed.
We didn’t really have that here. There was little or no contention with
 Appendix 3 381

the larger literary communities in New York because we were hardly

noticeable and probably not worth bothering about, beyond the reflec-
tive swat, as to a pesky mosquito. But things were changing, especially
with James Sherry’s Roof, and then Ted Greenwald and I starting the
Ear Inn series in 1978.

On Similarities and Differences among Language-Centered Writers

CB: In the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E period we didn’t have the same views or

the same interests. We may have shared a certain set of things we didn’t
like, but we didn’t necessarily share an approach to writing or have a uni-
fied set of poetic preferences. So in this sense, the structure was different
than a traditional literary movement, which has a set of principles. There
was a set of issues and concerns that we wanted to address, and there
were kinds of poetic practice that many of us thought were uninteresting.
There was a shared set of dislikes. But otherwise there was a lot of intel-
lectual disagreement, which you see in the letters too. The letters operated
not to formulate a shared position but to allow for conversation outside
the then dominant views about poetry and poetics.

BA: If there was such a thing as the group, the extended group of so-called
Language poets, then there would be some things in common that they
would all have, but lots of things that they wouldn’t. Then if you look
at L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine, where we’re publishing about
two hundred people, I think, in the whole full run, those people often
don’t have anything in common. Some of them were stuck in there as
transitional figures. We did a featurette, I did, on Rosmarie Waldrop,
we did one on Eigner or Coolidge, and we did people, like Stein, who
would clearly not be the small cluster of people that would get known in
history books as the Language writers. So we were spreading out in that
way. Was there a L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine community? No.
Was there a Language poet community? To some degree, but everybody
was very testy about that. People didn’t want to be labeled, or they didn’t
want other people to get that label, or they didn’t think they deserved it.
So it’s tricky, community is a tricky thing, especially because this wasn’t
face to face. Usually you think of communities as people who know
each other face to face.

CB: We were seeking common ground in editing the magazine: putting

382  Appendix 3

forward specific poets and specific approaches to poetry. The effort

might seem more cohesive just because of how ferociously our poetics
were rejected outside our immediate circles. And then it turned out we
weren’t so far out on a limb—turns out we galvanized a powerful alter-
native that was otherwise not visible. People started coming out of the
shadows—both historically in our collective research but also among
our contemporaries. L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E was a probe: it was the
start of something, not the conclusion. It was the beginning of fleshing
out connections and affinities that none of us could have been aware of
at the time. So our community wasn’t just collaborative in the Mickey
Rooney and Judy Garland sense of “let’s do something together”; it was
also predicated on intellectual disagreement, dissensus. Ron was very
contestatory about any number of things, but he was so open and spe-
cific that it made it a thrill to write to him. Bruce too. Bruce and I didn’t
have the same views or dispositions—that’s what kept our collaboration
edgy, or let’s say we kept each other on edge.

On the Structure of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Magazine

CB: I like the term constellation, from Walter Benjamin. Constellations are
not necessarily fixed and you can find new patterns that emerge among
the array of particulars. And also a single particular can be part of more
than one constellation. Collage, mosaic, tendency—these are other terms
that might open up the idea of a poetry constellation. That’s why it was
for us possible to see a connection with a poet with whom we had no
prior connection, with whom there was no history of affiliation. Or in
the years after to acknowledge that this poet or that was doing work
acutely relevant, even if we didn’t know that work at the time.

In the magazine, we were bringing together people who had a recip-

rocal interest in what we were doing, who we knew on the ground, but
also brought in people without that, who in retrospect might seem as if
they were always already part of our context. Elective affinities. Eigner
was very important to all of us in the main group, but put Eigner next
to Mac Low, nobody had done that. Bruce and I certainly understood
Eigner and Mac Low to be crucial; you bring these two together and
they make perfect sense in terms of this nonsensuous similarity or
affinity. Because it was collaborative, it’s almost like a museum exhibit.
It wasn’t meant to be ongoing, we weren’t covering the field of poetry,
 Appendix 3 383

we were trying to put together a set of things that came together. The
juxtaposition makes the sense, not some prior history of association or
aesthetic, which would in this case keep them separate (projectivism
versus Fluxus, say). By the Open Letter, the fourth issue, in which we
had the longer pieces, we had done what we had to do and it was suffi-
cient. We didn’t want to start to publish full-length essays.

BA: The pieces that were originally short little articles in

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine that looked like they could’ve been
expanded from letters—which some of them were—then turns into
this sort of transitional phase of more academicized, longer essays.
There’s more of that in Poetics Journal than we ever had. If you compare
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine to Poetics Journal, you can begin to
see the effect of academia. They’re networking in academic ways that we
were not. That, and also the lack of academic protocol being followed.
It’s not an MLA paper, it’s not the publication guidelines for footnoting,
or that shit, you know.

On the Role of Written Correspondence and Networking in the

Formation of Language-Centered Writing and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E
Magazine

CB: I remember that was a very specific conversation that Bruce and I had.
We noticed that you get letters and that the letters were more interesting
than anything you would see in print. There’s no question about that. I
mean I’m trying not to be figurative.

BA: So those are two things: the letter stuff, and our use of the letters as edi-
tors to try to reach out to a wider range of people, just to have coverage
of certain things, which was very difficult to do.

CB: We would open up, in that sense, conversation through letters. It’s
about dialogue, it’s about bringing things together that are not normally
brought together and people and ideas that did not know each other.
Now that can sound like a common form of eclectic editing, but this
was the opposite of that: we were always looking for something that
was relevant to our specific focus; we weren’t interested in variety but
in connections. L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E was much more of a collage or
an exhibition that Bruce and I created by cutting things out from letters
384  Appendix 3

and published works and mixing them with commissioned pieces and
submissions. And it worked because now it looks as if it was an expres-
sion of something that existed before.

MH: So through the correspondence model you aimed to develop a fresh

kind of networking—maybe closer to curating?

CB: If you want to talk about networking for us, it’s not networking as peo-
ple mean in sharing contact information. It’s the bringing together of
a network in a sense of a mapping of works that fit the criteria of what
interested us—works that were addressing those issues in some way.
We wanted to go beyond that habitual grouping, geographically and
conceptually, and to bring in pieces of the mosaic we were making from
poetics, politics, philosophy, and art. It isn’t surprising that Bruce and I
had an interest in political economy and philosophy as much as litera-
ture or literary criticism.

On the Duplication/Circulation of Letters prior to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E

Magazine as an Alternative to Conventional Critical Pieces

BA: Yeah, that happened some. Like if I said something interesting about a
book, or if I said something interesting about my poetics to person X
and then somebody else asked me the same thing, I’d say, “Well, I just
have this paragraph here. I’ll xerox it and send it to you; I explained
this yesterday or last week to somebody; or, I just got this letter from
so-and-so with a fascinating paragraph talking about this,” and dah-
dah-dah. That happened prior to the magazine, but it also happened
after the magazine, so we would get a hundred words in a letter talking
about somebody’s book, and we would say, “Perfect, could you just blow
this up a little bit? Give us three hundred words on the same topic, and
then we’ll publish it.” There was a little bit of that going on, in addition
to sharing the correspondence, because I think Charles and I—it sure
was true of Ron—were probably corresponding or in minimal corre-
spondence with a hundred people each, and different people. So it just
got a little crazy, and you’re just repeating yourself, and, you know, there
was a little bit of that.

CB: So you get these letters, yes, we did actually xerox and exchange
them, like samizdat; there was no other way to get this information.
 Appendix 3 385

So that’s what we also thought to publish. I liked the immediacy of

the style of the letters, because I did not like expository writing—
especially reviews—and, for me, one of the most crucial things about
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E was trying to find alternatives to expository
writing and critical writing and scholarly writing. So I think the
immediacy, jotting, stuff like that, was crucial.

BA: Reviews are celebrating or promoting, or they’re self-promoting, or

they’re talking about how something works, the procedures that make
up a piece. They’re not evaluative. I’ve never written an evaluative book
review in my whole life. I’ve never written a negative book review, for
instance, right? The idea would never occur to me. But this is what aca-
demic critics want: “Why don’t you people attack each other more, why
don’t you write more negative reviews?” Even though I have real hostile
attitudes toward thousands and thousands of poets [laughter], you’ll
never see that in print.

On Editorial Practice: The Formal Dynamics of the Letter

BA: We generally didn’t do a lot of asking for revision except for length,
because we published only very short things. We wanted to have a lot of
variety and we didn’t want big academic papers. We wanted these little
short things, so that’s probably related to the correspondence too. The
letter quality is there—the length is crucial.

MG: And the constraints are very much the constraints of a letter in some
kind of a way.

CB: That’s true. Short, not a waste of time, no going in—

MG: Pithy. Immediacy, no footnotes—

CB: And informal.

MH: What about the idea of a letter that persuades or a letter that
defends? Earlier we were talking about this in relation to editors and
more conservative poets, but I assume there are times even with peo-
ple who think largely as you do when you’re in a position to defend
things—
386  Appendix 3

BA: Yeah, you talk about why you like person X, or you say, “Really? You’re
reading that person? What the fuck, hold on.”

MH: And you just have to let it go or mount your argument, right?

BA: Yeah, or just mount your contempt. Just spew your bile, or just act really
skeptical about what they’re into, and this would be also about people
writing about the movies they’re going to, the records they’re listening
to. My letters back and forth with Ron are filled with that stuff—and
stuff about politics too.
MG: And it’s also information exchanged in those kinds of ways.

BA: Yeah, a lot of that.

On Editorial Policy: Coherence and Diversity

CB: What’s interesting about L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E is that, in the end,

we made a strong case for something that was otherwise not being put
forward and we found that a lot of people were interested. And it holds
up surprisingly well partly because of our collaboration, which was a
very good one because—as you can see, we were as different then as
now—we’re very different personalities. And Bruce, really, had a much
stricter sense of the collaboration, which I think was what made it great.
I attribute this to him, which was that if we didn’t both agree something
worked then we weren’t going to do it. It had to meet our criteria, which
was painful to me at times. I would say, “We’re missing all this other
worthwhile stuff ”—or someone we like personally—and he would say,
“Well, yes, you’re missing it, but what is there that would fit our criteria?”
You’d have to find something that would fit our criteria that couldn’t just
be like putting together a conference program or including something
completely different because it was current or had a social but not aes-
thetic relevance, at least as best we could determine at the time.

BA: We beat the bushes to figure out who we wanted to ask. We had very,
very little unsolicited material come in. We only did it for a couple of
years, and it was very low profile. We published a couple hundred copies,
small number of subscribers. It was never reviewed. There was never any
big featurette in the Village Voice or any kind of magazine. I don’t even
know how people heard about it, by and large. It wasn’t even like a poetry
 Appendix 3 387

magazine you could get into bookstores as easily. So we made rosters of

topics—what we wanted to have written about—then we made rosters of
people who we’d like to have writing, and then we’d match them up.

MG: So it was done by invitation.

BA: Pretty much, pretty much. I’d say 80 percent or 90 percent was solicited
by us, rather than coming in. A poetry magazine will get lots of unsolic-
ited material once they get their address out there.

CB: Ann Vickery’s Leaving Lines of Gender argues there was male domi-
nation, and she focuses on Ron’s relationship with Lyn as if Ron were
somehow patronizing to Lyn, whereas I think their relationship was an
exchange of equals and friends.69 But one of the issues here is that you
do have men talking to men. Steve said, about LEGEND, “There weren’t
any women who would have been willing to collaborate with us.” It’s
problematic perhaps, but not completely untrue, at least for me as the
youngest person in that group. In retrospect it seems like so many peo-
ple would want to work with us. But in my mid-twenties there were
very few interested. I had published my own first two books. And of
course we self-published both L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E and LEGEND.

On the Development and Expression of “Interest”

CB: We were eggheads, and, as I was saying, who would want to work with
us? Now it might look different, but there was much more “we’re trying
to get people interested” for Bruce and me in New York, where there
wasn’t a scene in the way there was in San Francisco. Even with the Ear
Inn and all the things that I organized at it, we really were trying to find
. . . the idea that we would exclude somebody . . . we literally would take
somebody out to dinner just to, say, buy them a drink. Our context here
was if people came to a reading and they were interested and we didn’t
know them, we’d say, “Happy to have somebody interested!”

MG: It’s so funny because I remember the first time I met you. I heard the
reading and ran into you at Moe’s Books on Telegraph, and I said, “You

69. See, for example, Andrews’s letters to Hejinian of July 29, 1977, and October 9, 1977.
388  Appendix 3

don’t know who I am, but I just wanted to say that it was a fantastic
reading.” And you stopped what you were doing and said, “Who are
you?” And I said, “I’m just—I’m not even—I’m nobody. . . .” And you
said, “What’s your name? Who are you and why are you interested in
this stuff?”

CB: That is very accurate to the way I was. That’s my personality at that
time, and it comes out partly because of my personality in general,
but it also comes out of this very specific circumstance in which there
wasn’t anybody interested. For L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine—and
at UCSD you can see that I made a little card for each subscriber—I did
preserve the names. There was a little file box. There were originally two
hundred subscribers for four dollars for the six issues of the first series.
We located two hundred people internationally.

BA: I think the real opportunity for people to get excited about this kind of
poetry writing —leave the essay stuff aside for a second—is their already
having developed a boredom and a lack of interest in what’s already out
there, and what’s dominant, and what’s hegemonic. My sense of that
developed out of the jazz world. That was what modern jazz was all
about. It literally made you bored with the previous generation, so that
when you heard Charlie Parker you said, “Ah, those Johnny Hodges
records, they’re lovely, but they’re just not where we’re at right now.”

MG: And then you heard Ornette Coleman, and that kind of did that.

BA: Yeah, exactly. “Ah, maybe I’ll get rid of those Horace Silver albums”
after I heard Cecil Taylor. That was always my image, because that’s the
image I got from the avant-garde art world, the avant-garde film world.
When this stuff comes out it’s going to agitate you and volatilize you to
the point where your tastes change, and all of a sudden you can’t just
say, “Oh, I love all kinds of poetry, I like this, and I like this, and, now, I
also like so-called Language poetry.” No. You have to say, “There’s a new
place in my spectrum because I’ve dropped the first one, and now I can
put something at the end, like I’m not going to read Auden anymore,
or Merwin, or, I don’t know, Anne Sexton.” It’s different from the essay
writing, you see, because there was no prior essay-type writing in the
poetics vein that you had to get bored with in order to appreciate what
we were doing.
 Appendix 3 389

On the Potential Effect of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E in Displacing the

Thinking That Had Been Taking Place in Letters

BA: Sure, yeah, but you would have had to do that even after the magazine
started, because it wasn’t like people were getting published all the time
in the magazine, and they were very specific: I’m going to write a little
essay on Rosmarie Waldrop, or I’m going to write a piece on John Wie-
ners, or I’m going to write a piece in the politics issue. So, no, that didn’t
just give you this freewheeling chance to just blab about your poetics
and your excitements and what you are enthusiastic about.

CB: The argument I would make now is that L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E maga-

zine was not a representation of an already existing aesthetic or a preex-
isting group of people but rather a collage of people who didn’t necessar-
ily know each other, ideas that had not necessarily been put together, and
it was not a montage—where I make that distinction—but a collage, a
juxtaposition of things that Bruce and I could both together see.

MG: Which is what happened in letters.

BA: I think, and also in conversation. By the time people all moved to these
towns, you became much more involved in conversations then with
dozens and dozens of people locally in several fields. And so we’re
hanging out with filmmakers and hanging out with musicians and
choreographers and painters and we’re having conversations more than
we’re writing letters. Charles is doggedly writing a thousand letters to a
thousand people so the empire goes on for him, but I didn’t do that as
much. I started becoming a bad correspondent, which I’ve continued to
be for the last thirty years. I refer to it as epistolary aphasia. That used to
be my constant: “My apologies for my epistolary aphasia.”

On Cultural Conflict in Letters and in Public

BA: We were carving out a space, and that required us to jettison all these
people who we found outrageously overrated and not interesting and
holding everything back and clearly devoting themselves to holding
things back and not articulating why they thought they were better than
other people. Sometimes they would trash us in ways that were inter-
esting, like we hated emotion, or we don’t have any personality, or we’re
390  Appendix 3

just reductive theorists cranking out imitations of our French role mod-
els. So we’d get a little sense of what the hostility comes from.

MH: Did you ever find it useful? Was there something that you could get
traction against to respond, or something that you could think through
to reposition—

BA: They ruled the roost, so they didn’t feel the need to explain why this
cozy, heart-warming lyric was going to be good, as compared to some-
thing that was disjunct or didn’t have a narrative or didn’t have a clear-
cut persona. They could just hammer their students with it, and they
could win all the prizes and get laudatory book reviews about how nice
beautiful line endings were.

MG: So this is still going on.

BA: Of course, but they never lay it out, and that’s always bothered me and
still does. We didn’t do a lot of trashing of the opposite camp because
we were very vulnerable. We generally were being trashed by everybody
older than us in the poetry world, with just a few exceptions, just a few.

On the Reasons for Ending L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Magazine

BA: One of the reasons—this is what we talked about at the time—that we

decided to stop doing the magazine was because we got the sense a lot
of the people were just sniffing around the poetics. All these academics
were interested in our essay-theorizing but not in the books we were
talking about, so they’re not going out and buying these books: here’s
the address, here’s the very modest price, what’s wrong with you? You
know, this is what we’re about, we’re not writing manifestos to get
English Department jobs. No, we’re interested in this material getting
out, that’s why we did the distribution service, that’s what it was like.
Even though it wasn’t a poetry magazine, the focus of it was a certain
set of possibilities for radical poetry writing.

CB: There was a lot of pushback in the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E days that the
essays were more interesting than the poetry, and that could have been
irritating (and was). I’m not concerned about that now, but I remember
 Appendix 3 391

at the time it was very visceral. But if you think about it with regard
to Bruce, I think he wanted to do his massive poetic works, but he did
publish a collection of essays. Steve has gone on to do several essay
books. Ron did all that blog stuff in addition to “The New Sentence.” I
did my essay books and edited collections but also the websites. Other
people went on in different directions. I see L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E as
being a core for all that.

MH: Might the publication of these letters successfully lead readers back to
the poems, either the books that were written then or those that are still
being written by you, say, now?

BA: Maybe, it might lead them back. What I hope will be the case—and this
is what’s characteristic of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine—is that it’s
a broad snapshot of the scene, of the context, of the poetry community
or the poetry world. The small press world of the early 1970s is fascinat-
ing and complicated. When we were in the midst of it, we thought that
there’s going to be a number of competing, fascinating tendencies in the
American poetry world that, in retrospect, will be talked about, will be
really valuable. And then it turned out that that just wasn’t true. It turns
out that there was nothing, there was nothing, we were it. It’s like that
was all there fucking was.
Appendix 4
Mailing Labels for Original ~250 Subscribers

Ron Silliman to Bruce Andrews (12/21/77), excerpt

Speaking of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, the flyer & catalog look

superb, the list of who & on what likewise. As I told
Charles, I’m a little concerned about the size of the mail-
ing of the flyer (850 if I remember it right), since the
rule of thumb (quite accurate for all the political mail-
ings I’ve done & true in most lit ventures, tho nothing
quite like this one’s ever been tried) is that you have got
to be able to make your goal 2%. Which means 17 subscrip-
tions. 3% is considered excellent. Above that is phenome-
nal. What worries me is the nagging thot that (1) you might
not be prepared to proceed with such a handful of subs &
even more importantly (2) that to send it out only by subs
will see to it that it does not reach the people whom you
are trying to reach. I think you’ve got to be able to plan
on 100 or more freebies for at least the 1st year.

Charles Bernstein to Ron Silliman (1/3/78), excerpt

check on yr comments re free subs. one thing is to send YOU

a bunch of xtra issues to distribute to people who dont sub-
scribe &c. on a one shot basis. but Bruce & i are committed
to getting people to subscribe -- the $4 is a strain to a
very few people really & [we] dont want to set up a situa-
tion where there’s a list of “court favorites” or something
that gets copies free by virtue of that status while others
pay & feel left out of the “inside” -- so am hoping the most
“inside” people will actually subscribe & make life easier
for us. as to freebies -- i gave away enormous numbers of all
the Asylum’s Press books -- very happily -- but the newslet-
ter seems a different kind of proposition. JOIN UP & all.

393
394  Appendix 4
Appendix 4 395
396  Appendix 4
Appendix 4 397
398  Appendix 4
Appendix 4 399
400  Appendix 4
Appendix 4 401
402  Appendix 4
Appendix 5
Language Distributing Service Flyer

403
404  Appendix 5
Appendix 5  405
406  Appendix 5
Glossary of Major Authors of Letters

Bruce Andrews. Bruce Andrews was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 1, 1948. He received
his BA and MA from Johns Hopkins University (1970) and his PhD from Harvard
University (1975). He served as an administrative assistant in the arts and human-
ities program at the Bureau of Research, US Office of Education (1969); was an
assistant to the director at the President’s Commission on International Trade and
Investment Policy in Washington, DC (1970); and worked as a consultant to plan-
ning staff at the National Institute of Education (1971). He moved to New York City
in 1975 to join the faculty of the Political Science Department at Fordham Univer-
sity. From 1979 to 1982, he was a member of the editorial collective of New Political
Science.
For Andrews, a poem is first and foremost a political act, the efficacy of which
ultimately depends on how it positions the reader in relation to language itself.
He collects overheard and otherwise “found” language, which he jots down on
small pieces of paper and later—often years later—collates and collages into
larger assemblages and texts. His work from the early 1970s tends toward extreme
fragmentation at the level of phrase and even word. As he puts it in Edge (1973), “Most
of my stuff is based on fragmentation and the qualities of words other than (and
along with) their meaning. The words aren’t related at the center but by their edges
(connotation, etc.)—like the interrelated pieces of a non-representational ceramic
sculpture.” Toward the end of the 1970s, more syntactically coherent units emerge
in his writing. His works published in the 1970s include Edge (1973), Corona (1973),
Vowels (1976), Praxis (1978), and Film Noir (1978).
From 1978 to 1981, Andrews coedited L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine with
Charles Bernstein without printing a single erratum. This poetics journal offered
a critical forum for writers whose work was being published in magazines such as
Ron Silliman’s Tottel’s, Robert Grenier and Barrett Watten’s This, Bob Perelman’s
Hills, and James Sherry’s Roof. The venue featured short critical, theoretical, and
review essays that often appeared as correspondence, collaged texts, and modes of
“composition as explanation.”

————

407
408  Glossary of Major Authors of Letters

Charles Bernstein. Charles Bernstein was born in New York City on April 4, 1950. He
received his AB in philosophy from Harvard University (1972) and was a King
Fellow at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia (1973–74). While
working as an editor, technical writer, and translator in New York City, Bernstein,
along with Bruce Andrews, founded L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine in 1978.
This work helped shape the radical poetics that surfaced in the early 1970s in New
York City and San Francisco and is generally considered the best introduction to
so-called language-centered writing. During this period he also started Asylums
Press (on his own IBM Selectric typewriter) and the US mail-based Language
Distribution Service (copying important out-of-print work on demand). During
this period he also published six volumes of poems: Asylums (1975), Parsing (1976),
Shade (1978), Poetic Justice (1979), Senses of Responsibility (1979), and Controlling
Interests (1980). As the David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters at the State Uni-
versity of New York at Buffalo from 1989 to 2003, he cofounded the Buffalo Poetics
Program. He lives in Brooklyn and holds the Donald T. Regan Chair at the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania.
With respect to his formative work of the 1970s, in his essay “Semblance” (1981),
Bernstein describes his “poetics of constellation” as “working at angles to the strong
tidal pull of an unexpected sequence of a sentence—or by cutting off a sentence or a
phrase midway and counting on the mind to complete where the poem goes off in
another direction, giving two vectors at once—the anticipated projection underneath
and the actual wording above.” His poems thus highlight what he describes as the
“music” of the text and the overall sound of the work as he collages and mixes words,
phrases, and sentences derived from different professional, political, and disciplinary
sources. He understands such language as “characterization” writ large, and the figure
of the reader as close critical listener is key. His poetry is designed to estrange the
languages that are used to socialize people and thus to make readers aware of the
power dynamics of writing and speech.

————

Robert Grenier. Robert Grenier was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on August 4, 1941. He
earned a BA from Harvard University (1965) and an MFA from the University of
Iowa Program in Creative Writing (1968). He was a visiting poet at the University of
California–Berkeley (1968–70) and taught for a year at Tufts University (1970–71),
for five years at Franconia College (1971–76), and for three years at the New Col-
lege of California in San Francisco (1980–83). Together with Barrett Watten, he
cofounded the magazine This (1971–74), which, along with Ron Silliman’s Tottel’s,
was a significant venue for various writers, artists, and poets now identified as the
Language poets. Early on, Grenier was influenced by Robert Creeley, whose Selected
Poems (1975) he edited, and Larry Eigner, whose Collected Poems of Larry Eigner,
volumes 1–4 (2010), and Calligraphy Typewriters: The Selected Poems of Larry Eigner
(2017) he coedited with Curtis Faville.
Grenier’s poems of the 1970s are exercises in highly focused minimalism
and seriality and were fascinating to the Language poets, who saw in them an
unprecedented intelligence and attention being paid to the matter of written language
itself—to syntax, phrase, word, and letter. As Silliman expressively puts it, “Grenier’s
 Glossary of Major Authors of Letters 409

poetry of the 1970s was magnifying language to a scale bordering on the unreal, like
watching ants under a telescope behaving like dinosaurs.”70 Grenier also explored
ideas of seriality beyond the book, writing and publishing in unorthodox formats.
Sentences (1978) comprises five hundred unbound 5” × 8” cards, each of which
contains a few typewritten words or phrases. Appearing in a small cloth box, the work
invites any number of different readings, as readers are free to arrange the cards as
they wish. Cambridge, M’ass (1979) was published as a black 40” × 49” poster, with
each of its circa three hundred small poems appearing in its own white box.

————

Lyn Hejinian. Poet, essayist, translator, and educator Lyn Hejinian was born in San Fran-
cisco on May 17, 1941. In 1976 she founded Tuumba Press in Berkeley, serving as its
editor from 1976 to 1984. With Barrett Watten, she edited Poetics Journal from 1982
to 1998, and with Travis Ortiz, she codirects Atelos, a literary project that commis-
sions and publishes cross-genre work by poets. She is a professor of English at the
University of California–Berkeley.
After graduating from Harvard in 1963, Hejinian settled in the Bay Area.
Along with Watten, Ron Silliman, Carla Harryman, and Rae Armantrout, she
developed a poetic style influenced by continental philosophy, Russian formalism,
and experimental modernist writing by authors such as Gertrude Stein and Louis
Zukofsky, as well as the New York and Black Mountain Schools of poetry. Her work
develops poetry’s relationship to autobiography, novelistic narrative, and diary.
Hejinian’s works in the 1970s range from the relatively straightforward prose
format of A Thought Is the Bride of What Thinking (the inaugural publication of
Tuumba Press in 1976) to the more lyrical Writing Is an Aid to Memory, whose
densely collaged lines are often lifted from books and organized on the page
according to the letter of the alphabet that begins the first word of each line. Other
books include A Mask of Motion (1977) and Gesualdo (1978), published as the
fifteenth Tuumba chapbook. This early period concludes with publication of the
celebrated volume My Life (1980), a post-subject autobiography.

————

Steve McCaffery. Steve McCaffery was born in Sheffield, England, on January 24, 1947. He
earned a BA in English and philosophy from the University of Hull in Yorkshire
(1968), an MA from York University in Toronto (1970), and a PhD in poetics,
English, and comparative literature at SUNY Buffalo (1997), where he is currently a
professor and holds the David Gray Chair of Poetry and Letters.
An innovator in sound poetry, concrete poetry, and visual poetry, McCaffery
moved to Toronto in 1968 and was part of the Canadian avant-garde poetry scene
during the 1970s. In 1970, he began to collaborate with poets Rafael Barreto-Rivera,
Paul Dutton, and bpNichol, together forming The Four Horsemen, an influential

70. Ron Silliman, “V,” in The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography,
San Francisco, 1975–80, part 9 (Detroit, MI: Mode A, 2009), 82.
410  Glossary of Major Authors of Letters

sound poetry group (1972–88). They released two vinyl records (Nada Canadada,
1972; Live in the West, 1977) as well as two cassettes (Bootleg, 1981; 2 Nights, 1988).
With The Four Horsemen, McCaffery also coauthored several books, including
Horse d’Oeuvres (1976) and The Prose Tattoo (1983). In 1973, along with bpNichol,
McCaffery formed the Toronto Research Group, which applied poststructuralist
and psychoanalytic theories to poetics. They wrote a series of experiments in
theoretical and critical writing in the journal Open Letter; these have since been
collected in Rational Geomancy (1992).
McCaffery was the prime advocate for theory among the language poets in the
1970s, and his writings of that period—Carnival (1967–75), Dr. Sadhu’s Muffins
(1974), Ow’s Waif (1975), and Intimate Distortions: A Displacement of Sappho
(1979)—were all influenced by continental philosophy and international poetry. His
visual poetry is held in collections at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the
Paul Getty Research Institute in Malibu, the International Concrete Poetry Archive
in Oxford, and the New York Public Library in New York City.

————

Ron Silliman. Born in Pasco, Washington, on May 8, 1946, Ron Silliman attended Merritt Col-
lege (1965, 1969–72), San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University)
(1966–69), and the University of California–Berkeley (1969–71). He left the university
in his senior year to do alternate service as a conscientious objector to the draft.
Throughout the 1970s, Silliman worked as an activist in nonprofit organizations
for prisoners and inner-city low-income neighborhoods in the Bay Area. After
employment as an editorial assistant for Mecca Publications in San Francisco in
1972, he was director of research and education at the Committee for Prisoner
Humanity and Justice in San Rafael, California (1972–76), eventually becoming
the organization’s director of education and a lobbyist for the largest coalition
of prisoner rights organizations from 1973 onward. He later served as a project
manager at the Tenderloin Ethnographic Research Project in San Francisco
(1977–78) and as director of outreach at Central City Hospitality House in San
Francisco (1979–81). He also worked as a lecturer at San Francisco State University
(1977–78) and the University of California–San Diego (1982). He was the editor of
Tottel’s magazine (1970–81), a major venue for controversial new work, and received,
among other awards, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1979 and
California Arts Council grants in 1979 and 1980.
Silliman’s poetry of the 1970s moves quickly from the minimalist scatter of Crow
(1971) to the long prosoid pieces that eventually come to exemplify what he described
in the 1980s as “the new sentence.” (This is worked through, partially in letters, from
March 1976 on: aRb, along with “Horizon,” evolved into “Language Writing” and then
“The New Sentence.”) The sequencing of the discontinuous, yet accretive, paratactic
sentences in the paragraphs that make up Ketjak (1978) and Tjanting (1981), his two
major works of the period, are based on numbered and rule-governed procedures
(the second on the Fibonacci series). Designed to make the reader acutely aware of
the sentence as a structural unit in concert and conversation with other sentences,
these texts bloom into complicated meditations on space, time, and quotidian life.
Glossary of Cited Magazines and Journals

For information about small poetry magazines, see Audra Eagle Yun, “Guide to the Collec-
tion of Small Press Poetry and Fiction Serials MS.M.037,” Online Archive of California, 2012,
[Link]

0 TO 9. Eds. Vito Acconci and Bernadette Mayer. Six issues, 1967–69. New York: 0 to 9
Books. Facsimile edition, Ugly Duckling Press, Brooklyn, NY, 2006.
Alcheringa: A Journal of Ethnopoetics. Eds. Dennis Tedlock and Jerome Rothenberg. Six
volumes, thirteen issues, 1970–80. Boston: Boston University. Available online at http://
[Link]/[Link].
Amazon Quarterly. Eds. Gina Covina and Laurel Galana. Three volumes, nine issues, Sep-
tember 1972–March 1975. Oakland, CA; West Somerville, MA: Amazon Press.
The Annex. Eds. Julian (Tod) Kabza and Brita Bergland. Individual issues/anthologies pub-
lished as Biscuit (1975), Flora Danica (1976), Terraplane (1977), and Writing (1977?).
Windsor, VT: Annex Press/Awede Press.
Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography. Eds. Richard Peet, Phil O’Keefe, and Kirsten
Johnson. Eleven volumes, twenty-five issues, 1969–78, 1969–present. Worcester,
MA: Clark University, 1969–85; Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell (now Wiley-Blackwell),
1985–­present. Available online at [Link]
(ISSN)1467–8330/issues.
Attaboy. Eds. Linda Bohe and Phoebe MacAdams. Two issues, 1976–77. Boulder, CO: Atta-
boy.
Avalanche. Eds. Liza Béar and Willoughby Sharp. Thirteen issues, fall 1970–summer 1976.
New York: Kineticism Press, 1970–73; New York: Center for New Art Activities, 1974–
76.
Baloney Street. Ed. Michael-Sean Lazarchuk. Seven? issues, 1971?–74. Ventura, CA.
Beyond Baroque. Ed. George Drury Smith. Nine volumes, 1968–78, 1968–2004? Venice, CA:
Beyond Baroque Press.
Bezoar. Eds. Fred Buck, Thorpe Feidt, Paul Kahn, et al. Eighty-six? issues, 1975–81. Glouces-
ter, MA: Bezoar. Available online at [Link]
Big Deal. Ed. Barbara Baracks. Five issues, 1973–77. New York: Big Deal / Print Center.
BLAST. Ed. Wyndham Lewis. Two issues, 1914–15. London: Bodley Head.
Blue Suede Shoes. Eds. Keith Abbott and Steve Carey. Seventeen issues, 1968–74. Bellingham,

411
412  Glossary of Cited Magazines and Journals

WA; Monterey, CA: Blue Suede Shoes. Available online at [Link]

com.
Boundary 2: An International Journal of Literature and Culture. Ed. Paul A. Bové. Seven vol-
umes, seventeen issues, 1972–78, 1972–present. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Digitized by Duke University Press; issues before 2000 available on JSTOR.
Buffalo Stamps. Ed. Simon Schuchat. Seven issues, 1971–73. Chevy Chase, MD: Electro-Mag-
netic-Flux.
Café Solo. Ed. Glenna Luschei. Twelve issues, 1969–78, 1969–present. Albuquerque: Solo
Press.
Caterpillar. Ed. Clayton Eshleman. Twenty issues, 1967–73. New York; Sherman Oaks, CA:
Caterpillar Books.
Chelsea. Ed. Sonia Raiziss. Irregular 1958–2007 (thirty-seven issues, 1958–78). New York:
Chelsea Associates.
Chicago Review. Thirty-three issues, 1970–78, 1946–present. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. Available online at [Link] and JSTOR.
Christopher Street. Ed. Charles Ortleb. Thirty? issues, 1976–78, 1976–95. New York: That New
Magazine.
Clear Creek: The Environmental Viewpoint. Ed. Pennfield Jensen. Eighteen issues, April 1971–
December 1972. San Francisco: Clear Creek Associates.
Coyote’s Journal. Ed. James Koller. Ten issues, 1964–82. San Francisco: City Lights Books;
Albuquerque; Brunswick, ME.
Criterion. Ed. T. S. Eliot. Seventy-one issues, 1922–39. London: Lady Rothermere (1922–25);
London: Faber and Gwyer (1926–27; entitled New Criterion); London: Faber and Faber
(1927–39; entitled The Monthly Criterion 1927–28).
Cultural Correspondence. Eds. Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner. Ten issues, 1975–85. Provi-
dence, RI. Available online at [Link]
[Link].
Daedalus. Ed. Theodora West. 1972–present. West Chester, PA: West Chester University.
Dodgems. Ed. Eileen Myles. Two issues, 1977–79. New York.
Dog City. Ed. The Poetry Factory (Diane Ward, Doug Lang, et al.). Two issues, 1977, 1980.
Washington, DC.
El Corno Emplumado/The Plumed Horn. Eds. Margaret Randall and Sergio Mondragon
(1962–69); Robert Cohen (1969). Thirty-one issues, 1962–69. Mexico City: Ediciones El
Corno Emplumado. Available online at [Link]
E Pod. Eds. Kirby Malone and Marshall Reese. Six issues, 1978–81? Baltimore.
Eureka Review. Ed. Roger Ladd Memmott. Six? issues, 1975–83? Cincinnati: Orion Press,
University of Cincinnati.
Everybody’s Ex-lover (EEL). Eds. P. Inman, Doug Lang, and Lisa Shea. Four issues, 1973–77.
Washington, DC: Eel Press.
FATHAR. Ed. Duncan McNaughton. Seven issues, 1970–75. Buffalo, NY; Antrim, NH; Boli-
nas, CA.
FIELD: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics. Nineteen issues, 1969–78, 1969–present. Oberlin,
OH: Oberlin College.
For Now. Ed. Donald Phelps. Fourteen? issues, 1964–73? Brooklyn, NY: D. Phelps.
The Fox. Ed. Sarah Charlesworth. Three issues, 1975–76. New York: Art and Language Foun-
dation.
 Glossary of Cited Magazines and Journals 413

The Furies. Ed. Rita Mae Brown et al. Ten issues, 1972–73. Washington, DC: The Furies.
Gegenschein Quarterly. Ed. Philip Smith. Twenty-one? issues, 1972–81, 1972–90? New York;
Bowling Green, OH: Gegenschein Quarterly.
Georgia Straight Writing Supplement. Eds. Stan Persky and Dennis Wheeler. Twelve? issues,
1969–72. Vancouver, BC: Georgia Straight.
Ghost Dance: The International Quarterly of Experimental Poetry. Ed. Hugh Fox. Fifty-five?
issues, 1968–95. East Lansing, MI: Ghost Dance Press.
GUM Magazine. Ed. Dave Morice. Nine? issues, 1970–73? Iowa City: Happy Press.
High Fidelity. Eds. Charles Fowler et al. Thirty-nine volumes, 1951–89. Great Barrington, MA
(1951–81); New York (1981–89): Audiocom (1951–57); Billboard Publications (1957–74);
ABC Consumer Magazines (1974–89).
Hills. Eds. Bob Perelman and Michael Waltuch. Eight issues, 1973–83. Cambridge, MA; Iowa
City. Available online at [Link]
A Hundred Posters. Ed. Alan Davies, with Rebecca Muller. Forty issues, 1976–81. Boston
(1976–77); Boulder, CO (1977–78); New York (1978–81): Other Publications (later with
the assistance of the Segue Foundation). Available online at [Link]
IO Magazine. Eds. Richard Grossinger and Lindy Hough. Twenty-eight issues, 1965–80,
1965–98? Amherst, MA; Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Joglars. Eds. Clark Coolidge and Michael Palmer. Three issues, 1964–66. Providence, RI.
Available online at [Link]
Kayak. Ed. George Hitchcock. Forty-eight issues, 1964–78, 1964–84. San Francisco; Santa
Monica, CA.
Kulchur. Ed. M. Schleifer. Twenty issues, 1961–65. New York: Kulchur Press.
Là-Bas. Ed. Douglas Messerli. Thirteen issues, 1976–79. College Park, MD. Available online
at [Link]
LENS. Book by Frank Kuenstler. New York: Harry Gantt, 1964. Originally published in Film
Culture 33 (Summer 1964). Ed. Jonas Mekas. Available online at [Link]
org.
Liberation. Eds. David Dellinger et al. 1956–77. New York; Glen Gardner, NJ; Cambridge, MA.
Lines. Ed. Aram Saroyan. Six issues, September 1964–November 1965. New York. Available
online at [Link]
Living Hand. Eds. Paul Auster and Mitchell Sisskind. Eight issues, 1973–76. New York.
Locus Solus. Eds. John Ashbery et al. Five issues, 1961–62. Lans-en-Vercours, France: Locus
Solus.
Manroot. Eds. Paul Mariah and Richard Taggett. Eleven issues, 1969–78. San Francisco:
ManRoot Press.
MAPS. Ed. John Taggart. Six issues, 1966–74. Chicago; New York; Newberg, PA.
Margins. Ed. Tom Montag. Thirty issues, 1972–76. Milwaukee.
MIAM. Ed. Tom Mandel. Six issues, May 1977–October 1978. San Francisco. Available online
at [Link]
Minnesota Review. Ed. Roger Sherman Mitchell. Eleven (new series) issues, 1973–78, 1960–
present. New York: New Rivers Press (1971–73); Madison, WI (1973–75); Bloomington,
IN (1975–82). Available online at Project Muse.
Mojo Navigator(e). Ed. John Jacob. Four issues, 1969–73. Glen Ellyn, IL: Cat’s Pajamas Press.
Mother. Eds. Peter Schjeldahl et al. Eight? issues, 1964–67. Galesburg, IL; Northfield, MN;
New York: Kraus Reprint.
414  Glossary of Cited Magazines and Journals

Mother Jones. Eds. Richard Parker et al.; poetry ed. Denise Levertov. Three volumes, thirty
issues, 1976–78, 1976–present. San Francisco: Foundation for National Progress. Avail-
able online at Google Books.
Occident. Nine (new series) volumes, spring 1961–spring 1975 (suspended 1975), 1881–1981.
Berkeley, CA: Associated Students of UC–Berkeley.
Oculist Witnesses. Ed. Alan Davies. Three issues, summer 1975–fall 1976. Dorchester, MA:
Other Publications.
Open Letter. Ed. Frank Davey; contributing ed. Steve McCaffery. Nineteen issues, 1971–78,
1966–2013. Toronto, ON.
Penumbra. Ed. Charles Haseloff. Thirteen issues, 1967–74. New York: Penumbra.
Prairie Schooner. Ed. Bernice Stole. Thirty-six issues, 1970–78, 1926–present. Lincoln: Uni-
versity of Nebraska Press. Available online at JSTOR.
Rain. Ed. Jerry Parrott. Two? issues, 1971. Wilmette, IL.
Reality Studios. Ed. Ken Edwards. Ten issues, 1978–88. London. Available online at https://
[Link]/reissues/reality-studios.
Roy Rogers. Ed. Bill Zavatsky. One issue, 1970. New York: Horspitality House. Available
online at [Link]
Shocks. Ed. Stephen Vincent. Nine issues, 1972–81. San Francisco: Momo’s Press.
Slit Wrist. Ed. Terry Swanson. Four issues, 1976–77. New York: St. Mark’s Church.
Socialist Revolution. Thirty-six issues, January/February 1970–November/December 1977.
San Francisco: Agenda.
Stony Brook. Ed. George Quasha. Four issues, 1968–69. Stony Brook, NY: Stony Brook Poet-
ics Foundation.
Suction. Eds. Darrell Gray and Henry Pritchett. Three issues, 1969–73. Iowa City.
Sundial/SUN. Eds. Bill Zavatsky et al. Seven issues Sundial; five issues SUN, 1966–83. New
York: Sun Press.
Tel Quel. Eds. Philippe Sollers and Jean-Edem Hallier. Ninety-four issues, 1960–82. Paris:
Éditions du Seuil.
Telephone. Ed. Maureen Owen. Nineteen issues, 1970–83. New York (1970–80); Guilford, CT
(1981–83): Telephone Books Press.
Tens. Ed. Bill Little. Four? issues, 1972–? Los Angeles.
Text. Ed. Mark Karlins. Thirteen issues, 1976–81. Staten Island, NY: Station Hill Press.
This. Eds. Robert Grenier and Barrett Watten. Twelve issues, 1971–82. Franconia, NH; Oak-
land, CA: This Press. Digital index available online at [Link]
Toothpaste. Ed. Allan Kornblum. Seven issues, 1970–72. Iowa City: Toothpaste Press.
Toothpick, Lisbon, & the Orcas Islands. Ed. Michael Wiater; guest ed. (no. 5, fall 1973) Bruce
Andrews. Five? issues, 1971–73? Seattle.
Tottel’s. Ed. Ron Silliman. Eighteen issues, 1970–78. Oakland, CA. Available online at http://
[Link].
transition. Eds. Eugene Jolas et al. Twenty-seven issues, 1927–38. Paris: Shakespeare and Co.
TriQuarterly. Eds. Charles Newman and Elliott Anderson. Twenty-seven issues, 1970–78,
1958–present. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University. Available online at [Link]
[Link]/issue-archive-gallery.
Tuatara. Ed. Michael (Charles) Doyle. Twelve issues, 1969–74. Victoria, BC.
Upstart. Ed. Arthur MacEwan. 1971–? Cambridge, MA: University Radical Union, Harvard
University.
 Glossary of Cited Magazines and Journals 415

Velvet Light Trap. Eds. Russell Campbell, John Davis, and Susan Dalton. Eighteen volumes,
1971–78, 1971–present. Madison: University of Wisconsin (1971–89); Austin: University
of Texas Press (1989–present).
W.B. Ed. Patricia Spears Jones. One issue, 1975. New York: St. Mark’s Church.
Women’s Work. Seven issues, May 1975–June 1981. Washington, DC: Women’s Work.
The World. Eds. Anne Waldman et al. Thirty-one? issues, 1967–78, 1967–2002. New York:
Poetry Project.
Index

Although we have generally retained erratic spellings of names in the process of transcribing
the letters, this standardized index contains a comprehensive entry for every identifiable
reference to an individual in the volume, with the exception of Andrews, Bernstein, and
Silliman (whose names appear throughout).

Acconci, Vito, 14n21, 42, 44, 47, 50, 63, 68, Armantrout, Rae, 51, 73, 109, 110, 123, 136,
73, 104, 266, 411 154, 191, 221, 245, 266, 267, 276, 286,
Acker, Kathy, 118, 120, 124, 132, 149, 180, 287, 292, 293, 299, 302, 308, 316, 318,
182, 191, 205, 221, 235, 290, 302, 304, 328, 341, 347
308, 342 Aronowitz, Stanley, 330
Adam, Helen, 182 Ashbery, John (also “Ashes”), 43, 44, 62, 63,
Adderly, Cannonball, 276 86, 93, 95, 112, 113, 135, 190, 205, 275,
Adorno, Theodor, 334n64 279, 295, 297, 309, 319, 324, 413
Albers, Josef, 59, 78, 296 Ashley, Robert, 181
Ali, Muhammad, 335 Askevold, David, 181
Allen, Donald, 32, 116 Astle, Richard, 341
Alpert, Barry, 119, 204 Auden, W. H., 15, 71, 388
Althusser, Louis, 283, 341 Auster, Paul, 275, 413
Altman, Robert, 80
Amber, Edward, 180n46 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 65, 94, 112
Amirkhanian, Charles, 181, 191, 217, 240, 341 Baez, Joan, 124
Anderson, Benedikt, 46 Bailey, Derek, 326
Anderson, Beth, 180, 217 Bakunin, Mikhail, 293
Anderson, David, 117 Baldessari, John, 181
Anderson, Laurie, 180 Balibar, Étienne, 330
Andre, Carl, 149, 178, 191, 195, 206 Ball, Hugo, 232
Antin, David, 60, 112, 113, 124, 126, 133, 161, Ballerini, Luigi, 184, 203
179, 180, 190, 203, 204, 287, 288, 292, Balsmayer, Jeff, 341
298, 302, 309, 319, 328, 341, 347 Baracks, Barbara, 104, 106, 109, 120, 124,
Apple, Jacki, 182 131, 132, 151, 182, 194, 203, 216, 221,
Arakawa, Shusaku, 181 263–64, 266, 269, 277, 288, 293, 294,
Arensberg, Walter Conrad, 90 314, 319, 322, 327–28, 341, 347, 380

417
418  Index

Barnes, Djuna, 96, 184, 205 Bromige, David, 53, 54, 72, 74, 154, 187, 285,
Barnett, Anthony, 182, 207, 291 299, 301, 307, 308, 318, 319, 341
Barth, John, 66 Bronk, William, 74
Barthes, Roland, 14, 36, 48, 100, 135, 163–64, Broudy, Hart, 181, 214
180, 239, 264, 341, 368 Brown, Jerry, 126
Bartlett, Jennifer, 182, 207 Brown, Trisha, 203
Bataille, Georges, 165, 317 Brown, Willy, 227
Bateson, Gregory, 240 Bukowski, Charles, 57
Beckett, Samuel, 53, 65, 171, 179, 190, 205 Bunting, Basil, 47, 48, 56, 64, 78, 112, 113, 131
Bee, Susan, 141, 148, 176, 181, 200, 208, 215, Burke, Clifford, 113
216, 241, 289, 316n60, 379 Burnham, Jack, 152
Bellow, Saul, 157, 286 Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 264
Benamou, Michel, 172 Burroughs, William S., 79, 207, 306, 309,
Benson, George, 326 359, 367
Benson, Steve, 154, 280, 307, 308, 318, 331, Butts, Thomas, 305n58
341
Berg, Alban, 94 Caen, Herb, 191
Bergland, Brita, 333, 411 Cage, John, 65, 172, 180, 181, 191, 205, 253, 368
Berkeley, Edmund, 341n66 Callahan, Bob, 194
Berkson, Bill, 74, 81, 113, 114, 115, 280, 285, Cardarelli, Joe, 329
287, 328 Carmichael, Hoagy, 124
Bernheimer, Alan, 298 Carroll, Paul, 44, 48, 67, 74, 86, 98, 239
Berrigan, Ted, 28, 47, 132, 244, 287, 288, 292, Carter, Elliott, 94
293, 304, 324, 329 Cassady, Neal, 337
Berryman, John, 67, 264 Castro, Fidel, 108
Birnbaum, Norman, 198 Catanoy, Nicholas, 183, 192, 207
Blackburn, Paul, 54, 56, 76, 112, 113, 299, Cavell, Stanley, 184, 320
309, 312, 313, 317, 332 Césaire, Aimé, 43, 63
Blake, William, 305n58 Chadbourne, Eugene, 325
Blaser, Robin, 179, 183, 190, 191, 204, 256, Chaikin, Joseph, 184, 191, 217
271, 288, 378 Char, René, 36
Bley, Carla, 276 Charters, Samuel, 131
Bly, Robert, 40, 72, 93 Chatterton, Thomas, 170
Bochner, Mel, 181 Cheek, Cris, 341
Boggs, Carl, 81 Child, Abigail, 191, 202, 207, 232, 319
Bookchin, Murray, 89 Childs, Lucinda, 129, 203, 256
Brainard, Joe, 324 Chomsky, Noam, 145, 163, 170, 235, 240
Brandfass, Betsy, 108–9 Chopin, Henri, 152, 341
Brautigan, Richard, 214 Clark, Tom, 72, 81, 89, 114, 379
Braverman, Harry, 291 Clarke, Thomas A., 287
Braxton, Anthony, 127 Clifford, Wayne, 119
Brecht, Bertolt, 252 Cobbing, Bob, 152, 232, 341
Breines, Paul, 163 Cocteau, Jean, 41
Bresson, Robert, 256 Codrescu, Andrei, 72, 74
Bridgman, Richard, 190, 204 Coleman, Elliott, 43, 44, 45, 55, 62, 63, 93,
Brigham, Besmilr, 45 94, 95, 99
 Index  419

Coltrane, John, 276 184, 192, 203, 219, 223, 235, 239, 240,
Coolidge, Clark, xiv, 16, 25, 32, 44, 47, 61, 264, 286, 341, 378
66, 70, 74, 87, 96, 100, 101, 113, 115, 122, de Saussure, Ferdinand, 137, 224, 235, 240
124, 126, 132, 135, 136, 138, 148, 149, 178, Desnos, Robert, 280
180, 183, 190, 204, 221, 239, 247, 260, Dewdney, Christopher, 342
266, 268, 275, 279, 280, 284, 288, 290, Dickinson, Emily, 371
292, 293, 295, 301, 306, 308, 316, 320, Dilley, Barbara, 203, 232
324, 328, 332, 334, 338, 341, 342, 346, DiPalma, Ray, 13n18, 14, 52, 56, 67, 72, 73, 75,
347, 359, 360, 378, 381, 413 82, 83, 85, 86, 90, 91, 104, 108, 109, 110,
Corbett, William, 149 118, 120, 149, 151, 155, 168, 169n42, 173,
Corman, Cid, 76, 114 176, 177, 180, 181, 183, 191, 205, 222, 223,
Corner, Philip, 181 225, 236, 244, 249, 260, 262, 266, 267,
Corona, Juan, 115 268, 269, 278, 282, 284, 285, 286, 288,
Corr, Michael, 329 292, 293, 294, 295, 303, 307, 308, 311,
Corso, Gregory, 114 319, 333, 341, 346, 347
Cortázar, Julio, 66 Dlugos, Tim, 182
Crane, Hart, 309 Dolphy, Eric, 128
Creeley, Robert, 13, 16, 21, 25, 29, 53, 63, 66, Dorn, Edward, 53, 54, 71, 108, 115
68, 74, 75, 108, 112, 114, 120, 135, 142, Doyle, Davy, 136
179, 180, 183, 190, 204, 308, 309, 311, Dreyer, Lynne, 149, 180, 182, 191, 207, 222,
324, 328, 329, 332, 359, 361 266, 269, 278, 284, 285, 292, 327, 328,
Culler, Jonathan, 341 340, 341, 346, 347
Curson, Ted, 128 Drucker, Johanna, 320, 329–30
Duchamp, Marcel, 247
Darragh, Tina, 182, 207, 266, 288 Dufresne, Francois, 152
Davey, Frank, 151, 414 Duncan, Robert, 27, 33, 37, 38, 48, 53, 66,
Davidson, Michael, 124, 222, 328, 340, 341, 68, 70, 74, 75, 90, 112, 114, 115, 204, 283,
342 297, 302, 305n58, 306, 308, 309, 310,
Davies, Alan, 136, 183, 207, 222, 275, 278, 312, 319, 334
280, 288, 294, 319, 321, 327, 328, 340, Dunn, Robert Ellis, 203
341, 342, 413 Dworkin, Craig, 13n20
Davis, Angela, 89 Dylan, Bob, 137
Davis, Miles, 276
Dawson, Fielding, 122, 136 Eagleton, Terry, 341
Dean, Laura, 125, 129, 203 Eastwood, Clint, 177
de Balzac, Honoré, 368 Eco, Umberto, 171
Debussy, Claude, 97 Edwards, Ken, 273n54
Degroat, Andy, 125 Eigner, Larry, xiv, 8, 16, 26–29, 38, 42, 47, 51,
Dejasu, Lee, 181, 191, 206, 217, 285 52, 64, 66, 73, 74, 79, 88, 93, 94, 95, 97,
DeJong, Constance, 180, 182, 207, 342 99, 100, 101, 104, 112, 113, 117, 121, 122,
de Kooning, William, 78, 114 123, 126, 131, 133, 135, 177, 178, 180, 183,
Deleuze, Gilles, 341 188, 190, 204, 217, 243, 266, 275, 288,
Della Volpe, Galvano, 341 305, 307, 312, 321, 324, 340, 345–61, 378,
Delynn, Jane, 182 381, 382
Dern, Bruce, 256 Eliot, T. S., 15, 92, 412
Derrida, Jacques, 15, 137, 153, 164, 165, 171, Ellsberg, Daniel, 145
420  Index

Elmslie, Kenward, 114 Gibson, Jon, 181

Empson, William, 92 Gilfillan, Merrill, 291
Enright, Robert, 172 Gillespie, Abraham Lincoln, 342
Enslin, Theodore, 18, 52, 74, 113, 301, 313 Gilman, Richard, 96, 97
Ensslin, John, 180, 191, 205, 287, 321 Gintis, Herbert, 84
Eshleman, Clayton, 32, 36, 45, 46, 47, 48, 54, Giorno, John, 32, 47, 60, 77, 254
71, 73, 74, 93, 228, 303, 412 Gitin, David, 26, 29, 51, 67, 70, 73, 104, 109,
Eubel, Karen, 181 117, 334, 342
Glass, Philip, 125, 177, 187, 191, 232
Fagin, Larry, 46, 74, 81, 328 Gnazzo, Anthony, 181, 191
Farge, Maurice, 119 Godfrey, John, 207
Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, 256 Goffman, Erving, 170
Faulkner, William, 65 Gombrich, Ernst, 214
Faville, Curtis, 81, 87, 105, 117, 207, 222, 266, Gomringer, Eugen, 27, 28, 31, 40
267, 287, 288, 292, 294, 295, 341, 342, 347 Gordon, Dexter, 215
Fear, Clay, 123 Gorham, John, 330
Fenollosa, Ernest, 356 Gottlieb, Michael, 332
Feyerabend, Paul, 283, 296, 308 Gray, Darrell, 83, 115, 148, 414
Fibonacci, 138, 310, 410 Green, Gerald, 322
Finlay, Ian Hamilton, 27, 28, 342 Greenwald, Ted, xiv, 141, 149, 169, 180, 182,
Fisher, Allen, 241 207, 259, 262, 266, 269, 280, 285, 287,
Fitts, Dudley, 71 290, 293, 294, 295, 342, 347, 381
Flaubert, Gustav, 338 Grenier, Robert, 8, 13, 14, 16, 24, 25–28, 33,
Fletcher, John Gould, 218 34, 37, 38, 39, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 51, 53,
Ford, Ford Madox, 286 54, 56, 57, 59, 60, 62, 66, 69, 70, 71, 73,
Ford, Gerald, 120 74, 77, 80, 81, 82, 87, 91, 93, 99, 101, 104,
Foreman, Richard, 125, 184 112, 113, 127, 133, 136, 149, 173, 179, 183,
Forti, Simone, 180, 187, 191, 203, 205, 229, 190, 204, 221, 239, 266, 267, 268, 275,
232 280, 284, 287, 288, 293, 294, 292, 296,
Four Horsemen, The, 172, 207, 232, 331, 409, 306, 308, 310, 319, 320, 321, 329, 340,
410 342, 414
Fox, Terry, 319 Gross, George, 105
Freilicher, Mel, 285, 341 Grossinger, Richard, 40, 49, 56–57, 413
Freud, Sigmund, 202, 219, 224, 368 Gunn, Thom, 72, 120
Friedman, Ed, 177, 179, 191, 206, 207, 262, Guss, David, 236
288 Gustafson, Jim, 117
Friedman, Kathy, 28
Fromme, Squeaky (Lynette Alice), 120 Haas, Robert, 33
Fuller, Buckminster, 174 Habermas, Jürgen, 163, 164, 170, 202, 283,
296, 308, 338, 378
Garbo, Greta, 321 Haining, Jim, 107
Garnett, Eldon, 214 Hammett, Dashiell, 168, 252
Gass, William, 66, 96, 97, 341 Harrison, Jim, 71
Gaye, Marvin, 117 Harryman, Carla, 154, 191, 202, 222, 307,
Genovese, Eugene, 144 318, 341
Gibb, Jack, 283 Hartmann, Anna, 148
 Index  421

Hathaway, Baxter, 67 Jandl, Ernst, 152

Hathaway, Kit (William), 67 Jarrett, Keith, 140
Hawkes, Terence, 341 Jay, Martin, 146
Hawkins, Coleman, 131 Jeffries, Peggy, 127, 133, 135, 148, 305, 317,
Hayden, Tom, 235 336–37
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), 112, 113, 184, 205, Jew, Lew T., 180
280, 312 Johnson, Ronald, 77, 119, 288
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 164 Jonas, Stephen, 71, 203
Heidegger, Martin, 7, 271, 350, 355–56, 358, Jones, David, 115, 312, 313
359, 360, 361 Jones, LeRoi, 96
Hejinian, Lyn, 8, 183, 189, 190, 191, 204, 207, Jones, Patricia Spears, 124, 415
216, 222, 232, 280, 284, 288, 295, 301, Joyce, James, 65, 96, 112, 157, 161, 172, 246,
306, 308, 317, 318, 321, 327, 328, 329, 341, 312, 319
342, 387
Hemingway, Ernest, 53, 157, 161, 220, 264 Kabza, Tod (Julian), 275, 288, 333, 411
Henderson, David, 68 Kahn, Paul, 121, 222, 228, 325, 328–29, 341,
Higgins, Dick, 73, 151, 172, 178, 181, 183, 184, 411
192, 203, 206, 214, 216, 266, 267, 276, Kahov, Alexander, 194, 232
290, 342 Kamensky, Vasily, 194
Hine, Robert V., 236 Karlins, Mark, 275, 414
Hirschman, Jack, 136, 194 Katz, Leon, 172
Hiss, Alger, 170, 202 Kelly, Robert, 25, 46, 52, 54, 56, 71, 72, 74,
Hitchcock, Alfred, 134 113, 312, 313, 330n63
Hite, Shere, 212 Kempton, Karl, 342
Hölderlin, Friedrich, 358 Kenner, Hugh, 112
Holland, Joyce, 103, 104, 342 Kerouac, Jack, 140, 306, 359
Hollo, Anselm, 25, 28, 47, 87, 194, 266, 307, King, Kenneth, 203
329 Kinoy, Arthur, 235
Hopkins, Joyce, 26. See also Zukofsky, Louis Kissam, Edward, 74
Horn, Paul, 335 Kittler, Friedrich, 7–8
Howard, Richard, 311 Knott, Bill, 42, 58
Howe, Susan, 4, 276 Knowles, Alison, 180, 181, 182, 291
Howell, Anthony, 182, 207 Koch, Kenneth, 46, 115, 213
Hughes, Ted, 30 Kohl, Herbert, 213
Husserl, Edmund, 15n23, 264, 355, 359 Korkegian, Chuck, 110, 154, 245
Korn, Henry, 101
inman, p. (Peter), 8, 266, 267, 288, 333, 342, Korzeniowsky, Carole, 8, 218–24, 285, 292,
412 292n56, 302, 316, 340, 341
Ionesco, Eugene, 172 Kostelanetz, Richard, 39, 40, 49, 69, 77, 84,
Irby, Kenneth, 21, 27, 74, 114, 136, 266 104, 167, 191, 207, 378
Kreymborg, Arthur, 26, 90, 218
Jackson, George, 89 Kroetsch, Robert, 190
Jackson, Laura Riding, 96, 175, 182, 184, Kruchenykh, Aleksi, 194, 232
214, 262 Kubelka, Peter, 311
Jameson, Fredric, 126, 133, 157, 233, 239, 243, Kuchar, George, 90
330, 341 Kuenstler, Frank, 180, 413
422  Index

Kuhn, Thomas, 283, 284, 296, 297, 311, 308, Lurie, Toby, 181, 191, 206, 217, 240
309 Lyotard, Jean-François, 341
Kupers, Terry, 191
Kuzma, Greg, 39, 47, 48, 57, 82, 86, 90, 312 MacAdams, Lewis, 51, 64, 74, 77, 81, 118,
Kyger, Joanne, 70, 74, 108, 114, 149, 187, 207, 194, 236
219 MacAdams, Phoebe, 289, 411
Mac Low, Jackson, xiv, 8, 38, 47, 60, 74,
La Barbara, Joan, 180, 214 112, 113, 120, 137, 172, 179, 180, 181, 190,
Lacan, Jacques, 15, 100, 137, 165, 166, 183, 191, 204, 205, 206, 215, 217, 222, 223,
184, 187, 191, 203, 215, 219, 223, 239, 318, 247–48, 249, 250, 253, 266, 269, 275,
341 286, 288, 293, 296, 308, 309, 322, 324,
Lacy, Steve, 128 341, 342, 346, 347, 367, 382
Laing, R. D., 114 Magdoff, Harry, 83
Lakatos, Imre, 296 Magee, Ruchell, 89
Lally, Michael, xiv, 29, 39, 42, 43, 45, 49, 52, Magowan, Robin, 187
56, 70, 80, 83, 85, 89, 92, 96, 97, 108, Mallarmé, Stéphane, 309
128, 149, 157, 169, 182, 183, 199, 203, 207, Malone, Kirby, 266, 318, 321, 333, 338, 342,
215, 216, 222, 266, 287, 292, 341, 342, 412
347 Mandel, Tom, 154, 188, 316, 318, 341, 342, 413
Lang, Doug, 131, 183, 207, 266, 342, 412 Mao, Zedong, 143, 330
Lautreamont, Comte de (Isidore Lucien Marin, Peter, 202
Ducasse), 312 Martin, John, 86
Lawther, Martha, 51 Marx, Karl, 220, 224, 369
Layzer, David, 135 Mattingly, George, 115, 123
Lazarchuk, Michael-Sean, 70, 83, 304, 411 Mayer, Bernadette, xiv, 14n21, 32, 133, 135,
Lenin, Vladimir (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov), 138, 140, 149, 169, 178, 279, 180, 183,
71, 84 190, 204, 250, 256, 266, 269, 275, 279,
Levertov, Denise, 37, 71, 74, 414 280, 283, 285, 288, 290, 293, 294, 296,
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 152, 165, 304, 338 304, 308, 320, 328, 341, 342, 346, 347,
Lewis, Harry, 299, 317 411
LeWitt, Sol, 116, 216 McAleavey, David, 39, 52, 67, 68, 74, 82, 110,
Lichtman, Richard, 166, 202 124, 223
Lifshin, Lyn, 312 McAlmon, Robert, 37
Linde, Charlotte, 207 McCaffrey, Steve, xiv, 8, 9n17, 15, 130, 136,
Lippard, Lucy Rowland, 112 137, 138, 141, 148, 149, 160, 165, 169n42,
Lipson, Charles, 130, 145 177, 179, 180, 181, 183, 184, 190, 191, 203,
Lockwood, Anna, 180 204, 205, 206, 213, 222, 225, 232, 241,
Loewinsohn, Ron, 105 216, 225, 232, 244, 246, 260, 262, 266,
Long, Richard, 181 269, 271, 278, 284, 288, 292, 293, 303,
Lorca, Federico García, 256 304, 307, 316, 321, 325, 331, 341, 342, 346,
Lord, Albert, 310 347, 378, 380, 387, 390, 414
Lourie, Iven, 29, 187, 223, 239n50 McCarthy, Thomas, 296
Lowell, Robert, 15, 57, 211 McClure, Michael, 29, 54, 219, 232
Lukács, György, 84, 158 McCurry, Jim, 244
Lukens, Ellen, 46, 80, 110, 127, 128, 130, 132, McGrath, Tom, 313
145, 148, 173, 195, 197, 289, 291, 340 McIntosh, Graham, 115
 Index  423

McLuhan, Marshall, 162 Ong, Walter, 84

Melnick, David, 28, 39, 52, 53, 67, 68, 72, 74, Oppen, George, 26, 29, 37, 74, 112, 113, 177,
76, 104, 108, 110, 121, 123, 136, 149, 168, 179, 182, 188, 190, 204, 214, 220
180, 182, 187, 207, 232, 266, 268, 279, Orff, Carl, 94
287, 292, 298, 305, 318, 347 Ortiz, Simon, 17, 194, 200, 212, 236, 240
Meltzer, David, 115 Ortiz, Travis, 409
Melville, Herman, 368 Owen, Maureen, 133, 183, 191, 207, 209, 240,
Merton, Thomas, 43 414
Merwin, W. S., 43, 45, 58, 63, 388 Owen Sound (or “O(we)n So(u)nd”), 232
Messerli, Douglas, 333
Metcalf, Paul, 122, 136, 313 Padgett, Ron, 32, 46, 47, 54, 106, 122, 136,
Meyer, Tom, 25, 28, 29, 55, 72, 110, 132, 207, 324
342 Palestine, Charlemagne, 215
Milazzo, Richard, 184 Palmer, Michael, xiv, 25, 74, 112, 113, 119,
Milton, John, 113, 312 130, 149, 182, 207, 266, 275, 280, 286,
Mingus, Charles, 128 288, 290, 292, 301, 308, 319, 340, 346,
Miyata, Kohachiro, 335 347, 413
Monk, Thelonious, 130, 215 Parenti, Michael, 339
Monroe, Marilyn, 114 Partch, Harry, 65
Moore, Barrington, Jr., 144 Patchen, Kenneth, 68, 70
Morice, Dave, 27, 28, 40, 51, 307, 413 Paz, Octavio, 120
Morris, Robert, 180, 203 Pearson, Ted, 334
Morrow, Charlie, 214 Pelieu, Claude, 66
Musgrave, Alan, 296 Pell, Eve, 228
Penderecki, Krzysztof, 65
Nameroff, Shelley (Rochelle), 21, 23, 67, 91 Pepper, Jim, 236
Near, Holly, 127 Perelman, Bob, 2, 8n14, 14, 118, 190, 207,
Necker, Louis Albert, 218, 219, 223, 224 222, 266, 268, 275, 278, 279, 286, 288,
Newman, Barnett, 114 291, 292, 294, 298, 299–300, 301, 302,
Newton, Isaac, 162 306, 307, 318, 327, 333, 340, 341, 347,
Nichol, bp (Barrie Phillip), 119, 130, 137, 407, 413
204, 347 Perlman, John, 149, 207, 288
Nielsen, Carl, 195 Perreault, John, 47, 68, 73
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 7–8 Petri, Piedro, 241
Notley, Alice, 117, 132, 295 Picasso, Pablo, 220
Piombino, Nick, 182, 207, 260, 262, 266
Ochs, Larry, 264, 325, 326 Piper, Adrian, 182
Ockerse, Tom, 181, 191, 206, 342 Plath, Sylvia, 212
Offe, Claus, 202 Pleynet, Marcelin, 113
O’Gorman, Richard Pollack, Jackson, 114
O’Hara, Frank, 16, 71, 87, 112, 169, 220, 295, Ponge, Francis, 306
324 Porter, Bern, 181, 191, 206
Olson, Charles, 13, 21, 25, 27, 29, 37, 44, 54, Pound, Ezra, 4, 5, 15, 16, 26, 42, 55, 64, 65,
56, 60, 63, 67, 71, 114, 137, 142, 157, 161, 111, 112, 113, 115, 161, 186, 218, 220, 312,
239, 272n53, 283, 284, 301, 319, 324, 332, 319, 356, 357, 359, 366
356, 359 Powell, Bud, 130
424  Index

Preston, Jim, 24, 27, 28, 51, 52, 74, 104, 109, Ruscha, Ed, 181, 216, 233
110, 111 Russell, Leon, 124
Pynchon, Thomas, 66, 106
Samperi, Frank, 28, 342
Quasha, George, 29, 74, 105, 241, 414 Sanders, Ed, 84
Quine, Willard Van Orman, 117, 264 Sappho, 325
Saroyan, Aram, 32, 34, 38, 40, 43, 44, 47, 48,
Rachmaninoff, Sergei, 94 49, 51, 57, 104, 106, 113, 122, 136, 413
Radnitzky, Gerard Alfred Karl Norbert Sartre, Jean-Paul, 155, 156
Maria Hans, 297 Satie, Erik, 59, 65
Rainier, Yvonne, 180, 203 Scarlatti, Domenico, 94
Raitt, Bonnie, 124 Schechner, Richard, 184, 203
Rakosi, Carl, 74, 112, 113 Schjeldahl, Peter, 51, 81, 414
Rasula, Jed, 13 Schneemann, Carolee, 172, 182
Raworth, Tom, xiv, 87, 115, 149, 223, 241, Schulberg, Budd, 380
266, 268, 287, 288, 290, 293, 340, 346, Schutz, Alfred, 92
347 Schuyler, James, 324
Ray, Satyajit, 138 Schwerner, Armand, 31, 42, 55, 74, 113
Reed, Ishmael, 43, 66, 68 Schwitters, Kurt, 207, 214, 232, 248
Reese, Marshall, 51, 266, 338, 342, 412 Seaton, Peter, 182, 207, 260, 266, 267, 279,
Reich, Steve, 65, 76, 78, 125, 129, 215, 296 287, 295, 306, 332
Reich, Wilhelm, 202 Seger, Bob, 195, 197
Renoir, Jean, 80 Serrano, Nina, 154
Rexroth, Kenneth, 190, 205 Sexton, Anne, 212, 388
Reznikoff, Charles, 125 Shafton, Anthony, 232
Rich, Adrienne, 212 Shakespeare, William, 16, 79, 252, 253, 370
Riefenstahl, Leni, 163 Shapiro, David, 32, 46, 106, 163, 165, 186
Riley, Terry, 78, 215, 232 Shapiro, Jeremy J., 202
Rilke, Rainer Maria, 334 Sherry, James, 244, 260–61, 288, 317, 320,
Rimbaud, Arthur, 247 328, 333–34, 381, 407
Robinson, Kit, 222, 266, 278, 280, 291, 294, Shklovsky, Viktor, 309
298, 308, 318, 341, 342 Shoemaker, Jack, 108, 316
Roche, Denis, 81 Simic, Charles, 74
Roeg, Nicholas, 123, 138 Slater, Robert, 108, 149
Rosenberg, Jim, 181, 191, 279 Smart, Christopher, 16, 113
Rosenthal, Bob, 288 Smoot, Wakeman, 180
Rosenthal, M. L., 237, 311 Snow, Michael, 311
Rothenberg, Jerome, xiv, 6, 27, 28, 31, 32, 40, Snyder, Gary, 68, 72, 115
43, 44, 47, 52, 55, 72, 73, 74, 93, 104, 105, Sollers, Philippe, 276, 342
106, 111n33, 112, 113, 116, 141, 155, 156, Solt, Mary Ellen, 119
172, 178, 183, 189, 190, 192, 194, 202–3, Sondheim, Alan, 116, 118, 207, 221, 285, 342
204, 206, 213, 214, 216, 222, 223, 232, Sontag, Susan, 96, 341
287, 288, 292, 302, 309, 341, 346, 347, Sorrentino, Gilbert, 114
378, 411 Spanos, William V., 190
Rothko, Mark, 59, 78, 88 Spicer, Jack, 71, 114, 115, 122, 137, 249, 256, 258
Roussel, Raymond, 342 Spinks, Leon, 335
 Index  425

Stamos, Theodoros, 207, 266 Wagner, Richard, 94

Stanley, George, 54, 187 Waits, Tom, 124
Stein, Charles, 111, 183 Wakoski, Diane, 74
Stein, Gertrude, 14, 16, 17, 22, 26, 28, 32, 33, Waldman, Anne, 46, 47, 74, 133, 149, 415
38, 47, 48, 53, 63, 65, 71, 79, 90, 91, 93, Waldrop, Keith, 149, 180, 182, 207, 266, 268,
96, 98, 101, 111, 112, 153, 179, 190, 204, 287, 288, 292, 302, 333
205, 218, 220, 283, 312, 324, 356, 359, Waldrop, Rosemarie, 149, 182, 191, 207, 222,
360, 378, 381, 409 266, 268, 287, 288, 292, 302, 333, 340,
Steiner, George, 119, 165 341, 381, 388
Steingroot, Ira, 28 Walker, Wendy, 182, 183
Stella, Frank, 59, 78, 88, 296 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 283
Stender, Fay, 226, 228 Wallrich, Larry, 120
Stepulevage, Linda, 183, 207 Waltuch, Michael, 319, 413
Sterne, Laurence, 32–33 Ward, Diane, 266, 412
Stevens, Wallace, 15, 71 Warhol, Andy, 328
Swann, Brian, 316 Warsh, Lewis, 39, 74, 288
Swanson, Terry, 288, 414 Warwick, Dionne, 15, 103
Sweezy, Paul, 83, 117 Watson, Craig, 182, 207
Watten, Barrett, 8, 13, 14, 21, 24, 26, 70n30,
Tagett, Richard, 28 106, 109, 116, 117, 131, 133, 144, 148, 155,
Taggart, John, 28, 52, 74, 149, 207, 222, 285, 182, 190, 204, 216, 222, 223, 250–51,
298, 328, 341, 413 260, 267, 268, 269, 270, 276, 278, 279,
Tallman, Warren, 25n28 280, 286, 288, 292, 294, 297, 299, 302,
Taylor, Cecil, 140, 298 305, 307, 308, 314, 317, 321, 329, 340,
Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich, 94 342, 346, 347, 348, 349, 352, 379, 407,
Terkel, Studs, 212 408, 409, 414
Tharp, Twyla, 131 Weinberger, Eliot, 280, 329
Thomas, Dylan, 92 Weiner, Hannah, 131, 180, 182, 183, 191, 207,
Thomas, Lorenzo, 241 215, 216, 222, 250, 256, 266, 269, 309, 342
Thoreau, Henry David, 368 Weiner, Lawrence, 207
Thorpe, John, 52, 72, 291, 307, 411 Welles, Orson, 70
Todorov, Tzvetan, 341 Whalen, Philip, 113, 114, 307, 313
Torregian, Sotère, 68 Whitman, Walt, 311, 356, 360
Tottel, Richard, 78 Whorf, Benjamin Lee, 15, 23
Towle, Tony, 321 Wiater, Michael, 101, 116, 414
Trakl, Georg, 358 Wieners, John, 29, 74, 114, 132, 207
Wilden, Anthony, 341
Vanocur, Sander, 57 Wilk, David, 54, 222, 341
Van Riper, Peter, 191, 205, 229, 232, 233 Williams, Emmett, 33
Veitch, Tom, 74, 81, 117 Williams, Jonathan, 25, 114, 120, 132, 146,
Vertov, Dziga, 194, 203 203
Vincent, Steve, 317, 328, 414 Williams, Vaughn, 195
Violi, Paul, 46, 65, 86, 183, 191, 207, 209, Williams, William Appleman, 144
240, 321 Williams, William Carlos, 13, 16, 32, 56, 57,
64, 65, 90, 93, 112, 113, 114, 309, 356,
Waggoner, David, 317 358, 359, 360, 366
426  Index

Wilson, Edmund, 204 Young, Geoff, 222, 318, 341

Wilson, Martha, 182 Young, Karl, 183, 191, 205, 222
Wilson, Robert, 125, 184, 187, 191, 232, 243, Young, La Monte, 215
256 Young, Lester, 130
Winch, Peter, 297 Young, Neil, 15, 89, 143
Winch, Terry, 183 Yu, Timothy, 17n27
Wines, Morgan, 136, 148
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 36, 48, 122n35, 126, Zavatsky, Bill, 45, 46, 47, 61, 80, 414
145, 150, 235, 251, 271, 324, 338 Zinn, Howard, 145
Wolfe, Alan, 339 Zorn, John, 326
Wolmann, Gilles, 152 Zukofsky, Louis, 14, 16, 25, 26, 27, 32, 37, 47,
Wonder, Stevie, 108 48, 55, 56, 59, 63, 64, 66, 71, 74, 91, 93,
Woolf, Douglas, 307, 309 103, 112, 113, 120, 179, 190, 205, 220,
Wordsworth, William, 112 243, 298, 311, 312, 318, 324, 356, 359, 361,
Wyatt, Andrea, 38, 48, 131 409. See also Hopkins, Joyce

Xenakis, Iannis, 65