My Way : Speeches and Poems

by Bernstein, Charles

• ISBN13: 9780226044095
• ISBN10: 0226044092
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-02-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

"Verse is born free but everywhere in chains. It has been my project to rattle the chains."(from "The Revenge of the Poet-Critic") In My Way,(in)famous language poet and critic Charles Bernstein deploys a wide variety of interlinked forms--speeches and poems, interviews and essays--to explore the place of poetry in American culture and in the university. Sometimes comic, sometimes dark, Bernstein's writing is irreverent but always relevant, "not structurally challenged, but structurally challenging." Addressing many interrelated issues, Bernstein moves from the role of the public intellectual to the poetics of scholarly prose, from vernacular modernism to idiosyncratic postmodernism, from identity politics to the resurgence of the aesthetic, from cultural studies to poetry as a performance art, from the small press movement to the Web. Along the way he provides "close listening" to such poets as Charles Reznikoff, Laura Riding, Susan Howe, Ezra Pound, Allen Ginsberg, and Gertrude Stein, as well as a fresh perspective on L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E,the magazine he coedited that became a fulcrum for a new wave of North American writing. In his passionate defense of an activist, innovative poetry, Bernstein never departs from the culturally engaged, linguistically complex, yet often very funny writing that has characterized his unique approach to poetry for over twenty years. Offering some of his most daring work yet--essays in poetic lines, prose with poetic motifs, interviews miming speech, speeches veering into song--Charles Bernstein's My Wayilluminates the newest developments in contemporary poetry with its own contributions to them. "The result of [Bernstein's] provocative groping is more stimulating than many books of either poetry or criticism have been in recent years."--Molly McQuade, Washington Post Book World "This book, for all of its centrifugal activity, is a singular yet globally relevant perspective on the literary arts and their institutions, offered in good faith, yet cranky and poignant enough to not be easily ignored."--Publishers Weekly "Bernstein has emerged as postmodern poetry's sous-chef of insouciance. My Wayis another of his rich concoctions, fortified with intellect and seasoned with laughter."--Timothy Gray, American Literature

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
A Defense of Poetry	1	(2)
The Revenge of the Poet-Critic, or The Parts Are Greater Than the Sum of the Whole	3	(15)
Thelonious Monk and the Performance of Poetry	18	(7)
An Interview with Manuel Brito	25	(8)
Solidarity Is the Name We Give to What We Cannot Hold	33	(3)
What's Art Got to Do with It?: The Status of the Subject of the Humanities in an Age of Cultural Studies	36	(16)
A Test of Poetry	52	(4)
The Book as Architecture	56	(2)
Dear Mr. Fanelli	58	(5)
An Interview with Hannah Mockel-Rieke	63	(10)
I Don't Take Voice Mail: The Object of Art in the Age of Electronic Technology	73	(8)
Weak Links (on Hannah Weiner)	81	(2)
Claire-in-the-Building	83	(3)
Again Eigner	86	(4)
Frame Lock	90	(10)
"Passed by Examination": Paragraphs for Susan Howe	100	(4)
The Value of Sulfur	104	(4)
Shaker Show	108	(1)
Gertrude and Ludwig's Bogus Adventure	109	(1)
Introjective Verse	110	(3)
Poetics of the Americas	113	(25)
Unzip Bleed	138	(2)
Lachrymose Encaustic / Abrasive Tear	140	(1)
Stein's Identity	141	(4)
Provisional Institutions: Alternative Presses and Poetic Innovation	145	(10)
Pound and the Poetry of Today	155	(11)
Inappropriate Touching	166	(2)
Robin on His Own (on Robin Blaser)	168	(7)
Water Images of The New Yorker	175	(3)
The Response as Such: Words in Visibility	178	(8)
From an Ongoing Interview with Tom Beckett	186	(5)
Explicit Version Number Required	191	(1)
Hinge Picture (on George Oppen)	192	(5)
Reznikoff's Nearness	197	(32)
An Autobiographical Interview	229	(24)
Beyond Emaciation	253	(2)
Riding's Reason	255	(13)
Whose He Kidding	268	(2)
Unrepresentative Verse (on Ginsberg and Eliot)	270	(3)
Poetry and [Male?] Sex	273	(6)
Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word	279	(23)
Taps [In memoriam Eric Mottram]	302	(2)
Warning--Poetry Area: Publics under Construction	304	(8)
The Republic of Reality	312	(5)
Notes and Acknowledgments	317