LEGEND
The Complete Facsimile in Context
Conceived in 1976 and published in 1980, LEGEND exemplifies the political and linguistic commitments of then-nascent Language writing. Coauthored by Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, Ray DiPalma, Steve McCaffery, and Ron Silliman, the work was composed on typewriters and developed through the mail. The twenty-six poems in the volume bring together every possible permutation of collaborative authorship in one-, two-, three-, and five-author combinations, revealing the evolution of distinctive styles against and in conversation with others. Along with a complete reproduction of the original text, LEGEND: The Complete Facsimile in Context includes a critical introduction by editors Matthew Hofer and Michael Golston, a generous selection of material from the authors’ correspondence, and a new collaborative piece by the authors. This book will be an essential resource to students and scholars in twentieth-century poetry and poetics.
LEGEND is justly legendary: a fugitive anthology as oversized in the mythic imagination of Language Poetry’s history as its format. Comprising both the most radical and most typical impulses of the movement, it is a central text that simultaneously demarcates the outer peripheries of the mappable territory of the period’s avant-garde.
Matthew Hofer is an associate professor of English at the University of New Mexico. He is the editor of The Shoshoneans: The People of the Basin-Plateau, Expanded Edition and the coeditor of The Language Letters: Selected 1970s Correspondence of Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, and Ron Silliman (both from UNM Press). Michael Golston is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. He is the author of Poetic Machinations: Allegory, Surrealism, and Postmodern Poetic Form and the coeditor of The Language Letters: Selected 1970s Correspondence of Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, and Ron Silliman (UNM Press).
Acknowledgements
"The replacement of ourself with ourselves": The Making of LEGEND as a Five-Pointed Star
Matthew Hofer and Michael Golston
LEGEND
Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, Ray DiPalma, Steve McCaffery, and Ron Silliman
Appendix One. Re: Re: Legend
A New Five-Way Collaboration by Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, Ray DiPalma, Steve McCaffery, and Ron Silliman
Appendix Two. Excerpts from the Authors’ Correspondence
Contributors
Credits
Index
