Reading first issue of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E at long last.. these essays of youthful bombast and ideas that have shaped my writing several times removed but here first hand. And since the author of each bit appears after the bit, and I'm scrolling through them online, I'm left to guess- sometimes correct- whose writing (and thinking) style 25 years later is whose. In one way or another, I've been in some contact with most of these 1st wavers and, as someone just jumping into the pool in the last few years, regard them as canonized pro boomers, but to read them here is to understand them as they lived through their time in cultural space--before computers (a constant and delightful reminder by reading the originally typed documents as jpegs online), the Reagan years, globalism, before NYC was Disneyland,

...digression: this feeling too at watching Henry Hills' "Money." First I thought, wow, that looks dated, but I was alive and conscious then (though conscious more of My Little Pony than poetry), so that makes me dated. But not quite as dated as poets in fuzzy-collared jackets reading their poems on Wall St. (didn't even recognize this was Silliman until reading his post). My second impression was, wow, this sounds like Acufen, Stock Hausen and Walkman and other sample-driven, "glitch" music/electronica. All it needs is a phat beat.

before they could see the other side of their history-- that they would be historical- or did some/all already know that? And seeing the listing of periodicals that were then a flash, a few years run, as now: Attaboy, Zzzzz... and the interwoven contributors of past and current issues and their editors- much like today- a signature of a community of interdependence and few degrees of separation.

Won't finish issue 1 today- a ton of work just dumped on at work- but left off with favorite essay so far by Alan Davies, who, right up there with Steve Benson and Peter Inman, is the one of the most open and engaging poets of this bunch I've ever spent any time with (OK, maybe I shouldn't cancel the reading series this sentence makes me think).. Why wonder then that his essay manner and content, but moreover manner, catch me: "It is a word and a word, what else."