The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book

“Ok murky in alter all end, unpredictable day, with rainshine any degree night, the sun kin warm and hot. Enough stone or other jugs lineup of whatever is In Through Out That’s light as much as known Differences evanesce Like, where and/or what on the equator might be french or spanish Longitude and latitude, yep yep sure Americana.”―Larry Eigner, commentary on a selection from Ger­trude Stein’s Tender Buttons

“In 1978, a new magazine appeared on the American poetry scene. The magazine, strangely titled L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, became during its four years of publication a main forum for a group of young writers keen to engage in theoretical speculation and debate about their medium. L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E disappeared in 1981, but its name has lingered on, mainly as a means of designating a highly varied body of work which was shaped by the emerging protocols of the magazine.”―Peter Middleton, Contemporary Poetry Meets Modern Theory

“The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book was instrumental, not simply to laying a foundation for an urgently needed new sense of writing, but to vividly ar­ticulating the multidisciplinary and polytextual sweep of this writing’s core investigations.” ―Loss Pequeño Glazier, Dictionary of Literary Biography

“L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E is a perpetual intellectual delight, especially wel­come for its cogent reviews of small press publications. The editors, who are just as much at ease with Walter Benjamin and Gertrude Stein as . . . Tom Raworth, offer a wide variety of critical materials. . . . The perceptive re­views and comments make this a small gem.” ―Bill Katz, Library Journal

“For over twenty years, in magazines such as… L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E… this movement has given us a body of writing that may be the most signifi­cant since the modernists.”―Hank Lazer, The Nation

“An essential source. With its blend of voices and crisscrossing dialogues, the book has an almost novelistic density.” ―Voice Literary Supplement

“It is one of the first journals to extend directly from a concern for language as a ground base for poetry and one of the few magazines to provide an open forum for discussions of poetics by the writers themselves.” ―Michael Davidson, Archive for New Poetry Newsletter

“Apropos favorite books of the past year’s reading ... I read more absorbedly books like L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E… than I did much else.”―Robert Creeley, The Poetry Project Newsletter

“Attempting to make it new.” ―Donald Hall, Times Literary Supplement