My way : speeches and poems / Charles Bernstein.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bernstein, Charles, 1950-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bernstein, Charles, 1950---Aesthetics.

Bernstein, Charles.

Poetics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (334 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Language Note:

English

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 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

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

1. A Defense of Poetry

The Revenge of the Poet-Critic, or The Parts Are Greater Than the Sum of the Whole

Thelonious Monk and the Performance of Poetry

An Interview with Manuel Brito

Solidarity Is the Name We Give to What We Cannot Hold

What's Art Got to Do with It?: The Status of the Subject of the Humanities in an Age of Cultural Studies

A Test of Poetry

The Book as Architecture

Dear Mr. Fanelli

An Interview with Hannah Möckel-Rieke

I Don't Take Voice Mail: The Object of Art in the Age of Electronic Technology

Weak Links (on Hannah Weiner)

C1aire-in-the-Building

Again Eigner

Frame Lock

"Passed by Examination": Paragraphs for Susan Howe

The Value of Sulfur

Shaker Show

Gertrude and Ludwig's Bogus Adventure

Introjective Verse

Poetics of the Americas

Unzip Bleed

Lachrymose Encaustic / Abrasive Tear

Stein's Identity

Provisional Institutions: Alternative Presses and Poetic Innovation

Pound and the Poetry of Today

Inappropriate Touching

Water Images of The New Yorker

The Response as Such: Words in Visibility

From an Ongoing Interview with Tom Beckett

Explicit Version Number Required

Hinge Picture (on George Oppen)

Reznikoff's Nearness

An Autobiographical Interview

Beyond Emaciation

Riding's Reason

Whose He Kidding

Unrepresentative Verse (on Ginsberg and Eliot)

Poetry and [Male?] Sex

Close listening: Poetry and the Performed Word

Taps [In memoriam Eric Mottram]

Warning-Poetry Area: Publics under Construction

The Republic of Reality

Notes and Acknowledgments

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9786612538261

9781282538269

1282538268

9780226044866

0226044866

OCLC:

609863530