A Study On The Language And Forms Of Language Poetry

The20th century American poetry was rich in styles. Two poetic trends after the ending of Vietnam War in1975deserve notice. One is the new formalism, concentrating on the revival of conservative poetic forms; the other is Language Writing with radical forms in poetic composing. Language poetry is an innovative movement of poetic genre as well as a cultural movement. It destroys the usual expressive ways to make difficulty in understanding and to invite readers’ participation in meaning construction. Language poets throw more emphasis on the process of language composing and experiencing. Some language poets regard Language Writing as a parallel movement with post-structuralism and postmodernism. They propose many ideas more on the relationship between literature and politics than on literary writing. However, composing poems is an approach to discussing and analyzing the capitalist system. They attempt to participate in the change of the capitalist society with their radical language forms and deconstruction method.The forms are important for understanding language poetry, but the forms are represented by language use.Singularity is a typical character of the language poetry wording. The earlier avant-garde poets left great influence upon language writers. The first symbolist Rimbaud is actually an anti-symbolist as well. His ideas of the later surrealists to record the psychological movement detach the sentences, which is imitated by language writers. Gertrude Stein’s use of the deformed grammar in sentences, repetitions, and pronouns instead of nouns increases the indeterminacy of texts. Ezra Pound’s uses of juxtaposition of images and prose form poetry inform the language poets of parataxis and prose format poetry, which is the direct source of Ron Silliman’s new sentence. Objectivist Louise Zukofsky weighs much the materiality of language and forces readers to consider the value of language itself. Black Mountain poets emphasize the energy imbedded in language in that they put many improvised parentheses, either a phrase or a word or a sign, to separate the integrity of a sentence. In their poems, the text is a process of one signifier moving to another. Both these two poets are models for language poets. Robert Creeley’s language philosophy of self-sufficiency is also the idea of language writers. When language poetry is said non-referential, it is because the language uses become signifiers only and the poetic discourse does not express any realistic significance. But language poems are referential as well. A language poem demands readers to construct a higher level of the reference on the basis of the referential elements of language. One important way of composing language poetry is the new sentence proposed by Ron Silliman and a half of language poems are produced with it. The newness of the new sentence lies in two facts:1) a logical sentence or logical clause exists;2) the sentences in a poem are not coherent one with another. The sentences or clauses form parataxis. Readers need to fill in the gaps between sentences with the hypothesis of syllogism to achieve coherent meaning. Apart from new sentence, another way to write a language poem is collage.Language poems employ radical forms. Traditionally there are metrical rhymed verses and free verses. Language poetry does not use the rhymes. In style, language poems may appear as a result of the marriage of poetry and prose, poetry and theory, poetry and biography, or poetry and scientific works. Procedural writing is an important method of writing language poetry. Poets set constraints before writing and follow the rules in the composing process. Texts with funs are produced with this method and their forms are regarded as produced for the sake of forms. The realistic meaning of such poems is dissolved. Collage is also quite often used by language poets. In using collage, intertextuality often appears in the texts alongside. Free writing and stream-of-consciousness is also often employed by language poets. Under this way, some poems take a whole page as the display space while others present the movements of mentality and make readers confused facing those disrupted sentences. Any text written under procedural writing, collage, or free writing and stream-of-consciousness, is realized with various techniques and a poem becomes a broad field of linguistic experiments. The manoeuvre of artistic techniques opposes the content-centred writing, though some language poets say their poems are full of contents. With any technique, the materiality of language is weighed heavily.The forms of language poetry boast aesthetic significance. On the one hand, language poems directly present the Ostranenie, separating itself from common language; on the other hand, language poets are sensitive to the inter-conversion of Ostranenie and common language. Once a singular expression becomes tradition, it is abandoned and some new ways are to be explored. Ontology of language is explored by language poets through their works. They unconsciously adopt Sprachspiele guided by late Wittgenstein philosophy of language—meaning is to use. In their views, the use of language is the meaning of language itself, and the form of language is meaning."The Kiwi Bird in the Kiwi Tree" is a good illustration of language ontology. Numerous poems by Charles Bernstein make poems platforms of language use thus language itself is foregrounded. In a language poem, an authorial voice disappears and multiple voices focus on presenting the dynamics of language, which is just the philosophy of language ontology. The forms of language poetry have its significance in politics. The radical language is a way to express rebellion against official verse culture. Feminist poets take radical forms to fight against patriarchal discourse, black poets fight for identity recognition, and some others query the written history and try to revise. Under the umbrella of language poetry, whoever the minor groups are, they strive to construct multiculturalism with various radical forms of language.Language poetry itself is contradictory. Its theory and practice do not match so closely. Many poets say their works are nonreferential, but they try to explain the meanings of their poetry. Language poets hold different opinions of poetry and society, but they may not agree with one another. They insist on changing the world with language, but language as a tool of rebellion is weak. They overestimate the function of language. Their dream of changing and improving the capitalist society may not realize at all. To create a poetics of Americas and construct a country with multiculturalism may get in vain though they work together to do so. They do not have a manifesto of their claims. What the language poets do is to draw the attention of the public with their radical forms of language, which is too weak a tool to make their ideals realized.