"This new volume collects for the first time the four components of Silliman's seminal The Age of Huts, including one of the prose poems he is best known for, Ketjak. Silliman has taken on new guises since the original publications of these early works, especially as the author of the volumes-long The Alphabet and as inveterate blogger. This book shows a dynamic artist questioning nearly all the assumptions of English-language poetry. That he manages to dramatize the excitement of a very new way of thinking in an accessible way is a feat: no elitist head-in-the-clouds grandstanding here; Silliman writes in charismatic, direct sentences. 'The Chinese Notebook' takes its primary structure from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations — numbered paragraphs that ask questions about language and form while playfully operating through them — while 'Sunset Debris' is a serial autobiography strangely punctuated by questions concerning sex: 'Isn't it that certain forms of language, for example of erotic content, focus perception away from the words and the syntagmemic chain, a world suppressed in reference to another?' This volume makes available one of the few must-have works of American avant-garde poetry of the late-'70s." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Between the Age of Innocence and the Age of Experience comes "The ""Age of Huts. "This book brings together for the first time all of the poems in Ron Silliman's "Age of Huts "cycle, including "Ketjak, Sunset " "Debris, The Chinese Notebook, "and "2197, "as well as two key satellite texts, "Sitting Up, Standing, Taking Steps, "and "BART. "Each poem offers a radically different approach toward using language to explore the world. One of the founding works of Language Poetry, "The Age of ""Huts "is about everything, more or less literally, as each sentence, even each phrase, embarks on its own narrative, linking together to form a large polyphonic investigation of contemporary life. From "Ketjak, "one of the first poems to employ "the new sentence," to "2197, "a serial work that scrambles the vocabulary and grammar of its sentences, "The " "Age of Huts "questions everything we have known about poetry in order to see the world anew.

"It would be impossible to overestimate the importance of Ron Silliman's "Age of Huts"; it was ground-breaking when it first began to appear, piecemeal, a quarter of a century ago, and it remains a revolutionary work today. With its proliferative architecture, its encyclopedic arc, and its endlessly inventive methodology, "The Age of Huts," with virtually every sentence, renews its engagement with the world."--Lyn Hejinian