An online commentator, I have heard, has just described my critical work Questions of Poetics as imperialist and hegemonic—strong language indeed! While my book does make strong claims, they are in the context of critiquing, and revising, the history of Language writing after 2000, among many topics. One of its major polemical goals is to defend Language writing from the charge of being a “period style”—a term first used by Marjorie Perloff and taken up by others to dismiss Language writing’s continuing relevance. I argue that Language writing has been widely influential, among many tendencies; it is a part of the literary history and poetic resources of the present. That does not make it the Third Rome, no. … More
