![]() | ![]() Funny Business A Special Edition of The East Village Kent Johnson September 10 Delmore Schwartz on the Post-Language Generation "Once a literary and poetic revolution has established itself, it is no longer revolutionary, but something very different from what it was when it had to struggle for recognition and assert itself against the opposition of established literary authority. Thus the most striking trait of the poetry of the rising generation of poets is the assumption as self-evident and incontestable of that conception of the nature of poetry which was, at its inception and for years after, a radical and much disputed transformation of poetic taste and sensibility [sic]. What was once a battlefield has become a peaceful public park on a pleasant summer Sunday afternoon, so that if the majority of new poets write in a style and idiom which takes as its starting point the poetic idiom and literary taste of the generation of Bernstein, Silliman, and Hejinian, the motives and attitudes at the heart of the writing possess an assurance which sometimes makes their work seem tame and sedate." (Selected Essays) Next |