Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001
Subject: Re: innovative language magazines

The on-line Transcendental Friend has a strong conscious editorial
point-of-view, I believe (one so rigorous that some of their poets have been
suspected to be forgeries drafted to espouse house style).

Although with a wider net to its inclusiveness (apparently feeling a regional
mandate?), Skanky Possum might be worth singling out too--- because it may
represent the (sometimes more discursive) camps of innovation in opposition to second generation Language.

(I blush to admit how behind-the-times I am, but---) As I recognize only Osman and [Brian?] Kim Stefans out of your list,--- I do not understand what the terminology distinction of "process/documentation" or "text oriented/radically performative" signifies as a theoretical dialetic.

Could you please paraphrase?

(Doesn't an Osman-vs-Stefans distinction outline the validity of the loose term
"post-Language" vs. a continuity of pure Roof? Modelled on those two examples only, it might be reenacting a prior forking of the family tree, from New York School down a generation into Language vs. Poetry Project/East Village. The former are Oedipal break-aways; the latter, experimental traditionalists.)

("Performativity," since its original "How to Do Things with Words" coinage, is
now circulated very loosely, and differently in different circles [Judith
Butler's queer theory "performativity", the "performativity" now spoken of in
theater and the -qua-performing arts] . . . in a way almost inviting a William
Saffire-type etymology of its meaning-drain.)