something that Nick Piombino brings up in his interview with Tom Beckett: the historical sense of LANGUAGE poetry. Nick appears a lively chap yet he predates LANGUAGE poetry, as do I. LANGUAGE is so entrenched now, as a concept, let us say, that it takes an effort to realize it is only a few years old. I mean, don't you get an Aspern Papers sense of the old days, when Bernstein and Andrews et al. were re-creating (hyphen optional) the poetry landscape? if this were pop music, langpo would've been swept out long ago, and 15 new shining traditions would've marched in and out. but oddly, friend and foe alike got stuck on LANGUAGE. in the 70s, when I was a worse writer than I am now, the lessons I gleaned from LANGUAGE writers, both poetry and theory, were useful and inspiring to me. even if I've since had to shake off the weight of influence, as one does. I think the L-Word should be thrown out at this point, for people now obscess on the group thing, and the fighting is just getting tired. I demur at the idea of a revolution, it is just a generational churning, but good things came from the L bubbling. for which thanks, now let's keep on chugging.