On the other hand, while I do not perceive myself playing the role of the evangelist for poetry, I’ll half-heartedly wear that hat on behalf of language poetry because I personally enjoy much of it and believe it is important. I suppose I could think of situations in which I would say, “unlike other Elizabethans, here’s a sonnet writer you’ll actually enjoy”? Here’s one: My family has no idea what I do as an Elizabethan scholar and doesn’t have too much patience for literature, few of them having a college degree. But they want to try to understand what I do, so I give them something slightly easier at first. This, in fact, is my social situation with contemporary poetry.

On that note, I am very interested in what it must be like to grow up in a house with language poetry books. How do you yourself evaluate your perception of the difficulty (and quality, and profundity, etc) of language poetry given your unusual amount of childhood exposure? I imagine the vast majority of readers are introduced to language poetry academically and intellectually and as adults. Do you find that your critical opinion often differs from that of your poetic colleagues?

tom also brings up an interesting point: i haven’t thought too much about the connections between language poetry and the new york school, but it would be an interesting experiment to see how different schools of writing can give us access to others, despite the wildly different assumptions/intentions those schools might bring to their writing.

tom also brings up an interesting point: i haven’t thought too much about the connections between language poetry and the new york school, but it would be an interesting experiment to see how different schools of writing can give us access to others, despite the wildly different assumptions/intentions those schools might bring to their writing.

And, even just granting that Elizabethan sonnet writers are difficult, and a lot of readers, even smart and educated ones, have trouble with their poems, would you have written a review of, say, Philip Sidney, that said, “unlike other Elizabethans, here’s a sonnet writer you’ll actually enjoy”?

It seems like a strange move.

Daniel, yes, I was somewhat facetiously imagining that the majority of educated readers–even poetry readers–are slow to warm up to language poetry’s unique offerings. For such folks, I suggest Coolidge as a good place to start. And yes, some language poetry is very accessible, but the majority of it is tough. Even so, a language poet’s talent is not proportional to the difficulty of reading him, so I don’t concede that Coolidge is a lesser star just because he is an entry point into non-syntactic writing.

It’s really not THAT inaccessible, and there’re many places one can start, but even if it was basically impossible to read except as a kind of exercise, this still seems like an odd strategy. You wouldn’t, I imagine, promote some Shakespeare contemporary as “A Sonnet Poet You’ll Really Enjoy,” or a dadaist as “A Dadaist who Won’t Make You Say Your Child Could Have Done That.”

Maybe my question, reading this review, is it, do you think, that makes Coolidge a language poet, and what is the relationship between him and that school?