SOURCE: Messerli, Douglas. Introduction to Language Poetries: An Anthology, edited by Douglas Messerli, pp. 1-11. New York: New Directions Books, 1987.

In following introduction to his anthology of Language Poetry, Messerli emphasizes that, while Language Poets as a group constitute “a true community of thought,” their work is also highly individual.

In a decade in which so many poets and critics have expressed dismay over an ever-shrinking audience for contemporary poetry and have decried what they see as a decline in the cultural and political vitality of poetry and poetics, we have also witnessed something else: an almost meteoric rise in the publications and readership of the poets associated with what has come to be called “Language” writing, and an equal rise in the critical attention paid to them. Since 1976, poets associated in one way or another with this group have published over 150 books of poetry and criticism—demonstrating...