Abstract
This essay investigates the problematic issues of meaning, unmeaning, and interpretability in L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writing from a reader’s perspective. Drawing on the poetics of Charles Bernstein, Bruce Andrews, Ron Silliman, Lyn Hejinian, and Clark Coolidge, the paper explores how Language poets challenge conventional sign systems and force readers into active participation in the production of meaning. The essay examines the political dimension of Language writing as a resistance to commodity fetishism and argues that the movement’s provocative indeterminacy ultimately constitutes a socio-political act.
Keywords: Language poetry, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, meaning, unmeaning, poetics, Bernstein, Silliman, Hejinian, avant-garde
Introduction
The feeling of being a spider and struggling through the webs of a poem is not only felt by David Melnick, but is also felt by every reader of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writings. The feeling of suffocation caused by (mis)understanding a poem and the ache that the heart suffers are the expressed sensualities of a passionate reader whose mind is numbed by the disorientated projections of poet’s poetry in the form of a poem. Understanding the meaning or unmeaning of a L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poem, or the necessity to produce interpretations from it, creates a problematic scenario in L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writing and this becomes a crucial challenge for the studies of this particular literary genre.
By the word (or one may prefer it to call a phrase) L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E I not only mean the magazine L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, which Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews edited and published during February 1978 and October 1981; but the word means the whole genre of this kind of writing, for which the magazine was the leading voice. Ron Silliman, one of the prominent names of the movement, declares that he categorizes L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E “not [as] a group but a tendency in the work of many.”
The Poetics of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Writing definitely received its mature voice and also got its name with the publication of the first issue of the magazine named L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. The editors could only publish thirteen issues and three supplements, and the magazine ceased to exist soon after. However, the readers should not forget the disoriented projection of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Writing in its early years, when journals like This, Big Deals, Totte’ls, Open Letters performed the duty of publishing this new form of experimental writing.
The discussion of the poetics of Language Writing from the perspective of meaning and unmeaning will probably remain incomplete if the very meaning of ‘L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E’ is not clarified. The capital letters in L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E work as blocks which carry heaviness of meanings. To Language writers, letters are meaningfully connected to each other and for them L is equal to A, which also is equal to N and so on. Language is thus, as Julia Kristeva claims “our fundamental social code” and that what is written follows the “system of signs,” which is socially accepted and is understood by our interpretative ability.
According to Charles Olson’s conception about the “FORM”–“CONTENT” relationship, a poem works as a “FIELD” which creates a relationship between the poet and the reader. Olson perceived poem as “a high energy construct” and “an energy-discharge.” By using various forms, or even sometimes not using any, the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Writers create different possibilities to interpret the poetical verve stored in the poem. Bruce Andrews in “Text and Context” observes Language as “not a separate but a distinguishing reality” and questions, “Yet where is the energy invested?”
Meaning, Commodity Fetishism, and Political Practice
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Writings thus challenge the very notion of interpretation. Ron Silliman clarifies the political intention by relating L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry and the Marxist idea of “fetishism of commodity”: the primary impact on language, and language arts, of the rise of capitalism has been in the area of reference and is directly related to the phenomena known as the commodity fetish.
Thus post-war America with its Avant-garde aesthetics has been seen by the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Writers as a pure capitalistic society where everything is judged by its market value—even the very fact of reading is also a subject for commodification. L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Writing negates the idea of commodity fetishism as Andrews and Bernstein propose: “It is our sense that the project of poetry does not involve turning language into a commodity for consumption; instead it involves repossessing the sign through close attention to, and active participation in, its production.”
In L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Writing every sentence acts as a unit of meaning which challenges the capitalistic approach of commodification. By “active participation in” the production of that meaning, the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Writers propose a social engagement in the process of reading. Language with its acceptable sign systems thus creates multiple texts and contexts and different meanings, unmeanings and unreadabilities take their forms.
Clark Coolidge and the Form of Poems
The poet whose name and work need to be mentioned in conclusion is Clark Coolidge. Coolidge not only makes experimentations with poetic forms like Silliman and Hejinian, but he also intrigues the readers to think on how space can be filled to create a concrete ‘form.’ Coolidge, however, does not consider the word ‘form’: “I don’t want to use the word form, I want to use the word forms. The word is plural always, you never have just one.”
Conclusion
The puzzle does not give scopes to critically find a definite ‘meaning’ through which the conundrum can be solved. The challenge always remains for critics and scholars. It is undoubted that in the literary timeline L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Writing is perhaps the one and only initiative as of today, where the practitioners of a particular literary movement have directly challenged the very fact of reading. By producing the un/meaning(s) of poet’s poetry the reader finds himself in a lonely position, where his own interpretations emerge as his dearest friends, who carry him through the rest of his journey towards a socio-political change by L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E.