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Language Poetry Movement

Historical And Literary Periods
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A late 20th-century American poetic movement emphasizing language's materiality, philosophical complexity, and political dimensions. Rejected transparent communication and championed linguistic opacity and experimental form.

Detailed Definition
The Language Poetry Movement revolutionized American poetry through radical questioning of language and meaning. Poets treated language itself as poetry's subject. This movement appears in poetry through linguistic opacity and difficulty, fragmentation and disruption of syntax, foregrounding of language's materiality and artificiality, philosophical engagement with meaning-making, political critique through formal experimentation, and rejection of transparent communication, establishing language poetry as influential in contemporary experimental American poetry.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem where meaning is generated through the disruption of syntax, the arbitrary arrangement of words, and the focus on the materiality of language itself, as advocated by the Language Poetry Movement; A work that rejects the lyric 'I' and the notion of a stable authorial voice; A poem composed entirely of non-referential or randomly chosen words to foreground the language system; A collaborative text where the authorship is deliberately blurred or multiple.
Additional Notes
The Language Poetry Movement (1970s–1980s) challenged narrative coherence, treating language as a social construct rather than transparent medium. Poets like Charles Bernstein and Lyn Hejinian used fragmented syntax to critique ideology and authorship.
Also Known As
Language Poetry Language Poets
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