Lyric from L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E into the 21st Century

In the last two decades there has been an alert and inherently sceptical examination of Language Writing’s legacy to a younger generation of poets. Emerging from current scholarship is a strong sense that Language Writing must be viewed as the last of the American avant-gardes. If the appropriation of the avant-garde into mainstream culture denotes the invariable commodification of a radical aesthetics, it could be argued that Language Writing has already been disseminated into a texture of writing. Yet in adhering to a chronological pattern of emerging schools, there is the risk of fetishising poetic style as an adherence to what Alan Golding refers to as ‘New Newer and Newest Poetries.’ Within this chronological framing there is also the temptation to view how a ‘post’ Language poetics may be shaped.