Legend: The Complete Facsimile in Context

Recencies Series

by Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, Ray DiPalma

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 of 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.

328 pages, Hardcover

Published June 15, 2020

About the author

Bruce Andrews is an experimental poet, performance artist, literary theorist & recently retired (after 38 years) left-wing professor of political science. As Musical Director for Sally Silvers & Dancers, he has created sound designs and, in performance, live mixes of music & text for over two decades of performances.Most recent of a dozen or so big books is last year’s "You Can’t Have Everything… Where Would You Put It!", followed by a chapbook, "Yessified (Sally’s Edit)" celebrating the Andrews Symposium and its expanded archive, online at www.fordhamenglish.com/bruce-andrews, with links to interviews, performance texts, poetry, collaborations, and critical essays on his work. Another online archive (and interactive project) materialized on April 1, 2014 as a curated 25 hour ‘twitter sculpture’ [Twitter.com @BruceAndrews25h], a 300 poem sequence.

Reviews

[Serena · Rating 5 out of 5]

"We are like a band, deafened by years of our own volume. These names (do i mean Signorelli or Botticelli?) are ciphers whose sole purpose is to hold (down) the place of the (missing) proper name: why else would one write to a dead Spanish poet? To remember it (it has in fact many names), we are forced to make the distinction, to give up myth for legend, to abandon our atomization (5 of us in 3 cities, deeply connected), the act from which all true names follow. One is love. One is revolution."