SOURCE: Watten, Barrett. “Total Syntax: The Work in the World.” In Artifice & Indeterminacy: An Anthology of New Poetics, edited by Christopher Beach, pp. 49-69. Tuscaloosa, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1998.

In the following excerpt, Watten discusses the interplay between the speaker's identity and the outside world in the poetry of Ron Silliman and Steve Benson.

The querying of the status of the “other” is a central motive in the work of Ron Silliman and Steve Benson. “A bus ride is better than most art”—a total syntax is not limited to art but extends into larger structures. The paradigm of art or the position of the writer establishes not a hierarchy of forms but one perspective among many. In order to call into question the “other” it is necessary to call into question both the self and the work.

The point of departure in Ron Silliman's work is...