Meanwhile, my poetics taxonomy is clarifying (for me, at any rate). I had previously classified both infraverbal poetry and sprungrammar poetry as language poetry. Hmmm, for a moment I was going to unclassify infraverbal poetry as language poetry because few poets known as language poets practice it, while many non-language poets do. In fact, it's mainly a spin-off of visual poetry that some (Geof Huth, for instance,) consider a species of visual poetry (but it is nearly always significantly more verbal than visual, so I won't likely ever accept it as visual). Since it's a meddling with language, with orthography, it would not be logical not to consider it a mode of language-poetry. (Yes, all poetry is language-poetry, but language-poetry designates language-centered poetry, which all poetry is not, and it's a term many use, so I'm keeping it. Lots will argue with my definition of it, though, but I think it has not yet gotten an official definition, so I'll stay with mine.)

I now give it three major sub-classes: infraverbal poetry, sprungrammar poetry and non-representational poetry. Poetry that bursts the norm of spelling, poetry that bursts the norms of grammar (inflection and syntax), and poetry that bursts the norm of semantic rationality--beyond the "misuse" of syntax, parts of speech, spelling, etc.

Oddly, I find after reading a few things by Ron Silliman (an excerpt from Tjanting and "Albany," which I re-quote from New-Poetry below) that he is not a language poet in them, he is a jump-cut poet. But perhaps he is more a language poet in others of his things. Jump-Cut Poetry is one of the subclasses of idiological poetry, the other one being surrealist poetry.

Notes: the function of writing no doubt includes expressing the world, but the function of poetry is to enlarge the world. Not that Silliman's interesting (and world-enlarging) work above is poetry. For me, it's not evocature, either, "just" prose. But maybe I need to think this through. I define poetry as texts that have more than a few or no flow-breaks, which I have till now perceived as explicit. As spaces or passages of fi*******ller, as here. But it strikes me now, as I look at "Albany," that its jump-cuts work the same way as the devices I label flow-breaks.

Why, I wonder, does Silliman not use lineation? To disguise it as prose, and thus make it more unsettling (generally worth doing, since it keeps the composcipient on his toes, and slows his read enough to better allow infiltration of imagery and moods and ideas)? Anyway, I think I'm firm on this: jump-breaks as psychological flow-breaks rather than as lexical flow-breaks the way the other flow-breaks in my poetics are. "Albany" is a poem. Silliman will be relieved to hear that.

Looks like I'm finally starting properly to explore language poetry. I've read a little on it, but now will read more. Silliman, of course, has written a lot about it. Most writings on it are indirect, though. If it has a serious theorist as opposed to serious commentator, I haven't come across him. A serious theorist would begin by very clearly defining what it is and does, including a list of the devices used in it.

I'm now going to fly this by Ron and see what he says about it, if anything.

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