Continuing my work in the archives, I want to locate the shift from a more or less happy recognition of new writing in the late 70s to what can only be called full-fledged reaction by the mid 80s. While the encounter with Duncan over a materialist reading of Zukofsky was a premonition, it was an isolated—if internalized—event. The San Francisco literary avant-gardes—Language writing among others—got a lot good press at their moment of emergence, in a climate of openness that only encouraged their work. The milieu of Left cultural activism—backed up by federal support for alternative publishing through the NEA and community arts jobs via CETA—is readable in the October 1978 cover of the San Francisco Review of Books. The author shot of Kathleen Fraser juxtaposed with Ron Silliman reading Ketjak at Powell and Market Streets goes with the Left agenda: articles on Black power, the nuclear arms race, the Russian revolution, and—the small press. As with the earlier countercultural moment in the 50s/60s, avant-garde writing and small press publishing were seen as part of a cultural politics extending out in all directions. The inky, unpretentious typography of the cover goes along with a baseline populism of multiple agendas. … More
