Dan Disney says in his article, “‘Let Me In!’ Opacity and Illumination in an Age of Technological Reproduction,” that while lyric poetry serves as an “illuminating gesture towards the real,” L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poems “act as a metatextual invention which problematizes all claims to linguistic transparency.” But what does this really mean? Metatextual is defined as a poem or other form of communication critically commenting on itself and/or another poem or literary device. Problematizes means to make something into a problem that needs a solution. Linguistic transparency alludes to the relationship between parts of a word and its meaning, for example: the relationship between cow and shed to form cowshed, a shed in which cows live, is transparent because it is literal. However, not everything is literal, somethings make no sense, for example: shindig is a term for a large, lively party – it has nothing to do with a shin (front part of your lower leg) or digging.
So then, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poems are critically commenting about themself or other literature by playing with the words and concepts that are not linguistically transparent. But again, why? What is the purpose of this intellectually intriguing exercise? Is there any outside of erudite stroking of one’s own ego? Despite seeming bizarre, random, scattered bone remnants with lost puzzle pieces and left socks sort of writing, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E has a place in contemporary poetry because it opens our eyes to the politicization and capitalization of poetry and makes the reader aware of their own power in the construction of meaning.
Later in Disney’s article, he references the writing of Walter Benjamin, a German-Jewish philosopher who spoke out against the Third Reich. In 1940, Benjamin would take an overdose of morphine to avoid falling into Nazi hands. Benjamin’s brother would die two years later in Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. Jakob Israel Guthmann and Alfred Huba Guthmann were also among the estimated 35,000 killed in the camp, aleha ha-shalom. Five years before his death, Benjamin wrote an ideologic essay titled “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” as a form of protest against Nazi ideology. Benjamin wanted to ‘turn art’s function chiastically against the Fascists’ re-categorization of beauty, towards performance instead of a ‘politicized aesthetics.’” Simpolized, Benjamin disapproved of art serving as an aesthetic announcement of Nazi ideology and wanted artists to create work that would serve as a distorting mirror to the regime, showing disorder where they believed they had sterilized everything “clean.”
A cinema example that Benjamin would have approved of is The Matrix. In painting, the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets would look to artists such as Natalia Goncharova. In poetry, Gertrude Stein was an icon of the avant-garde movement. She famously wrote, “A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” In this line, I think I begin to understand. Linguistically, roses are used to symbolize so many things: love, beauty, sensuality, passion, Valentine’s Day, the Bachelor, admiration. We throw them from balconies after the troops come home, we offer them with blushes at elementary school to classmates. But the rose is just a rose; we, the viewer or reader, are the ones that give meaning to it. I think what language poetry is trying to do is to remind each of us that we don’t have to buy into other people’s meanings. Sometimes, a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
Hi Suz!
I found your response to Disney’s article to be a very cool take on language poetry and meaning. I like that the article used a lot of historical context to position the language and writing of these poets in a different light. We can definitely all agree that language poetry provides anything but linguistic transparency – although the form lends to more nuanced readings and greater room for interpretation, it also creates more work for the reader to understand what the poet is trying to convey. Along the same lines, though metatextual is a work commenting on itself, it also seems to contradict this idea because poems can be interpreted in many ways based on the language itself. In this regard, they aren’t meta at all, but open to interpretation because you can’t say for sure it is commenting on itself.
The exploration of language’s meaning based on what we assign is fascinating because the more we think about it, the more we question it. I like your take that sometimes, we need to see things as they are. It is more palatable to recognize an object or idea and use it in an acceptable way, than it is to question it and rework it until you don’t remember why you started in the first place!