SOURCE: “The Transformations of Objectivism: An Afterword,” in The Objectivist Nexus: Essays in Cultural Poetics, edited by Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Peter Quartermain, University of Alabama Press, 1999, pp. 301-17.

In the following excerpt, Altieri examines the legacy of Objectivist ideals and aesthetics in the poetry of Bernstein and other language writers.

I wrote the essay called “The Objectivist Tradition” in 1978, a time when poets like Robert Creeley had convinced me that the objectivist tradition could provide substantial contemporary alternatives helping writers resist the scenic lyrics and narcissistic self-projections dominating mainstream contemporary American poetry. Literary history now shows that I was right only about there having to be fresh alternatives to that dominant writing. There has been very little significant new writing that we could accurately label “Objectivist.” So it is tempting to claim that current work on Objectivism has to concern itself with why this became a road...