An imaginative mensch fruitfully complicates poetry. Bernstein (A
Poetics, not reviewed, etc.) is one of the most sophisticated
readers and writers we have. And he's also a wag - but seriously.
His "alternative" perspective can only rejuvenate, partly because
he's both a teacher (State Univ. of New York, Buffalo) and a
student (by temperament), both the critic and the criticized,
earnestly engaged with and yet also helpfully detached from poetry
and its ongoing politics. Combining commentary on general
intellectual issues (e.g., multiculturalism's move into the
academy) and criticism (of Ezra Pound, Charles Reznikoff, et al.)
with interviews and even poems - which here tend to double as
philosophical or aesthetic credos - this excellent collection could
serve well either as an introduction for newcomers or as the latest
installment, for familiars, of a continuing conversation with the
author. For, more than is tree of most literary thinkers, Bernstein
remains a committed personalist (without downsizing the scale of
his investigations): You hear his voice as though he were sitting
beside you, offering an amazingly mixed bag of wise asides and
sensibly contrarian discussions. A sampling: "The poet's life is
one of quiet desperation, although sometimes it gets noisy . . .
Many days I feel like one of those 50s street vendors demonstrating
multi-purpose vegetable cutters; the flapping hands and jumping up
and down may generate a small crowd because there remains interest
if not in the product at least in the humiliation of trying to sell
something few seem to want." Bernstein's pluralism, favoring the
goal of "finding the possibilities for articulation of meanings
that are too often denied or repressed," is in fact anything but
politically correct; as a founder of "language poetry," he has
always chosen to side with outsiderhood. It's remarkable how much
more persuasive his renegade stance now seems than that of the
poetic mainstream. For, as Bernstein so eloquently shows and tells
us, "Language, along with outer space, is the last wilderness."
(Kirkus Reviews)
""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 Way" illuminates 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 Way" is another of his rich concoctions, fortified
with intellect and seasoned with laughter."--Timothy Gray,
"American Literature"
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