Larry Eigner

Laurence Joel Eigner / Larry Eigner (August 7, 1927 – February 3, 1996) was an American poet of the second half of the twentieth century and one of the principal figures of the Black Mountain School.

Eigner is one of the lesser known Black Mountain poets, although he was influential among the next generation's Language poets. Highlighting Eigner's influence on the "Language School" of poetry, his work often appeared in the journal L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, and was featured on the front page of its inaugural issue in February 1978.

In Ron Silliman's introduction to his anthology of Language Poetry, In the American Tree (Orono, ME: National Poetry Foundation,1986)---dedicated to Eigner--- Silliman identifies this poet as one who has ‘transcended the problematic constraints’ of Olson's speech-based projectivist poetics. Eigner has himself pointed out that his poetry originates in ‘thinking’ rather than speech.

During his lifetime, Eigner wrote dozens of books and published poems in more than 100 magazines and collections. Charles Bukowski once called him the "greatest living poet."