Reason 1: Language writing should not be understood in merely formalist terms.

Reason 2: It is a consequence of the cultural logic of the period(s) in which it was written and has its influence.

Reason 3: But, we must ask, what is a cultural logic, and how many of them are there to name?

Reason 4: If Enlightenment is a cultural logic, not just an abstract universal, the poetics of this situation are yet to be found out.

Reason 5: It is not exaggerating to claim these debates have scarcely been engaged, and will continue past publication of this volume.

Reason 6: The relation of Language writing to identity is a major motivation, as is the question of free speech as liberationist goal.

Reason 7: The politics of neoliberalism in relation to Language writing’s use of political economy is a primary critical focus.

Reason 8: It shows how specific forms of community and identity are made and contested in the process of group formation.

Reason 9: Periodizing logics and claims of succession, of one avant-garde after another or by institutions, are called into question.

Reason 10: The irreducible crux of my argument is a rejection of the concept of period style and the opportunistic use made of it.

Reason 11: Poetics should not be confined to literary examples but extends to other genres, media, and life as it is lived.

Reason 12: A poetics of negativity works across genres and media to contest false positives in stylistic or institutional terms.

Reason 13: The most productive readings cross genre boundaries and aesthetic categories, while insisting on their specificity.

Reason 14: Thus reading, intensively and across genres and divides, the work of the poet-critic proceeds through the example of others.

Reason 15: Questions are sites for making meaning—poetry, arguments, friendship, politics—that are not determined in advance.

Reason 16: If poetics is a discourse of the making of the work in its condition of possibility, a world can only be the result.

Reason 17: Language writing is an aesthetic, ethical, and political stance toward making meaning in the world.