SOURCE: Silliman, Ron. “Language, Realism, Poetry.” In In the American Tree, edited by Ron Silliman, pp. xv-xxiii. Orono, Maine: National Poetry Foundation, 1986.

In following introduction to his anthology of Language Poetry, written in 1984, Silliman briefly comments on the origin and development of the movement.

“I Hate Speech.” Thus capitalized, these words in an essay entitled “On Speech,” the second of five short critical pieces by Robert Grenier in the first issue of This, the magazine he cofounded with Barrett Watten in winter, 1971, announced a breach—and a new moment in American writing.

As his essay was careful to make clear, Grenier's declaration was not to be taken at face value. Indeed, This 1 was obsessed with speech. Several of its contributors, such as Robert Creeley, Larry Eigner and Kenneth Irby, were associated in the minds of many readers in 1971 with the project known as Projective Verse, Charles Olson's unification...