Cahiers de Corey - poetry, language, thought, quoting an article from Critical Inquiry : "Language poetry considered under this description is simply not a literary practice, for it does not produce objects that belong to any category of language use. Nor is it, properly speaking, an aesthetic practice, for it is not oriented toward aisthesis , or perception. It is, rather, an ontological and ethical practice. Language poets produce poetry that is precisely equivalent to language, where language is considered as a kind of creatural knowledge or potential; therefore Language poets tend to treat the objects of their art--poems--as epiphenomenal evidence of a constitutively human capacity for free and creative agency that is the real object of their interest."

This, not to put too fine a point on it, does not even rise to a basic level of theoretical competence. How does reading a Robert Lowell poem involve an act of aesthetic perception that is somehow absent from reading a poem by Coolidge, Howe, or Silliman? How can a poem be "precisely equivalent to language"? I'd say very imprecisely equivalent. What can a "constitutively human capacity for free and creative agency" be if it excludes aesthetic practice? How can an ethical/ontological use of language not be aesthetic? Why are these terms opposed in this way?

(If language poetry were "precisely equivalent to language" in this respect, it would be the most wonderful poetry in the world: imagine capturing all of human creativity in one poem!)

But the argument seeks to demonstrate the old canard: the theory is interesting, but the poetry's not. In Critical Inquiry no less!