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LOG Charles Bernstein you can subscribe
Alan
Filreis PEPC
What
Makes a Poem a Poem?
60-Second Lecture, University of Pennsylvania April 21, 2004 (RealMedia, 1:23, 11.9 mb) link | 03-22-08
link | 03-19-08
(from 03-19-07)
Norman the Baker
Norman sat out on the bench in front of Pecan on Franklin, just before walking west to the Clocktower to tape Close Listening. We met up with Alan Davies, whose Close Listening shows I was taping right before Norman’s. After the recording session we wandered over to Excllent Dumpling for lunch, where we sat next to Lynne Stewart. I’d just seen Paul Chan’s film about Stewart, in which she talks about poetry and reads from Blake. We were eating in the shadows of the criminal court building in which she had been unjustly sentenced to jail. I was glad to meet her and express my appreciation for her work and concern for the price she might have to pay for defending freedom. Meanwhile, our small band of poets – Alan, Norman, and me – made our way over to the Chelsea to see Norman’s son Noah’s new show. January 5, 2007 (mp4, 28 seconds, 5.7 mb) link | 03-18-08
Tim Peterson PennSound has been making available the
LINE readings from the Drawing Center in New York photos:of Smith
(top) & Gordon ©2008 Bernstein
link | 03-16-08
link | 03-15-08
Robert Grenier photo: Bernstein/Jacket just out ... in
the new issue of Exquisite
Corpse for Eliot Spitzer all work and no play makes jack a dull boy ALL WORK and NO play makes Jack a DULL boy ALL work and NO play MAKES jack a DULL boy all work and no play makes jack a dull boy ALL WORK and NO play makes Jack a DULL boy ALL work and NO play MAKES jack a DULL boy all work and no play makes jack a dull boy ALL WORK and NO play makes Jack a DULL boy ALL work and NO play MAKES jack a DULL boy all work and no play makes jack a dull boy ALL WORK and NO play makes Jack a DULL boy ALL work and NO play MAKES jack a DULL boy all work and no play makes jack a dull boy ALL WORK and NO play makes Jack a DULL boy ALL work and NO play MAKES jack a DULL boy all work and no play makes jack a dull boy ALL WORK and NO play makes Jack a DULL boy ALL work and NO play MAKES jack a DULL boy all work and no play makes jack a dull boy ALL WORK and NO play makes Jack a DULL boy ALL work and NO play MAKES jack a DULL boy all work and no play makes jack a dull boy ALL WORK and NO play makes 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link | 03-23-08
link | 3-11-08
The Answer a
video by Niels Plenge
©2006 Niels Plenge and Charles Bernstein. link | 03-07-08
 Al Filreis on Close Listening recorded 3/5/08 Filreis talks about his new book -- Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-1960 University of North Carolina Press
photos © 2008:
link | 03-03-08
The Chinese/American Association for Poetry and Poetics (CAAP), initiated by leading scholars including Marjorie Perloff, Charles Bernstein and Nie Zhenzhao, was established in January 2008 with its headquarters at Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, University of Pennsylvania, USA. This is an international academic organization devoted to the study of poetry and poetics, focusing on the scholarship and translation of the international poetry, with special emphasis on the study and translation of North American poetry in China and Chinese poetry in North America, but also with a commitment to see North American poetry and Chinese poetry in a global context. This association will endeavor to introduce American and Western poetry and poetics to China so as to produce new energy for Chinese poetry and its study, and to introduce Chinese poetry and poetics to America and the world. Attention will also be paid to the scholarship and translation of philosophical approaches to poetry and translation so as to promote the study of poetry and poetics in the context of literary studies. A non-profit organization, CAAP is composed of scholars and poets of America, China and other parts of the world. It is chaired by Marjorie Perloff, professor emerita at Stanford University and former president of the Modern Language Association of America and American Association of Comparative Literature. Charles Bernstein, professor of University of Pennsylvania and fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Nie Zhenzhao, professor of Central China Normal University, vice president of the China National Association of Foreign Literature and chief editor of Foreign Literature Studies (FLS), an AHCI source journal, serve as vice presidents. The current association board is composed of the American and Chinese scholars and poets (See below). CAAP will follow its tenet and make every effort to sponsor academic activities such as scholarly conferences, exchanges of scholars, translation, and publication. All scholars and poets who share the interests of this Association are warmly welcome to join. The email address is caap2008@gmail.com. President ： Marjorie
Perloff link | 03-02-08
Cultural miscegenation (the mixing
of types) is in dialectical relation to assimilation.
Miscegenation, insofar as it is marked by difference,
resists assimilation. But miscegenation is also assimilation
by means of absorption—call it the syncretic. Conceptualized
as a function, assimilation has as its utopian upper
limit Emersonian moral perfectionism, whose horizon is the
new or invented, in the sense of emergent or not yet realized (possibly
not realizable). The dystopian lower limit is absorption into
the dominant culture without a trace of the constituent parts,
the fantasy of the total dissolution of otherness into the
mirage of the preexisting—call it the final solution by
other means.
link | 02-25-08
Nicole: Another Language Download Video Portrait file or click and play in QT. Nicole BrossardNicole came by and we mostly discussed prose poetry, for a class she was going to teach. But then I asked her about the different pronunciations of French in the Americas. November 8, 2006 (59 seconds, 11.4 mb click to launch QT or download ) link | 2-23-08
link | 2-18-08
University
of Arizona Conceptual Poetry and its
Others KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY MARJORIE PERLOFF with featured artists Caroline Bergvall, Charles Bernstein, Craig Dworkin, Peter Gizzi, Kenneth Goldsmith, Susan Howe, Tracie Morris, Cole Swensen The recent publication of Craig Dworkin and Kenneth Goldsmith’s
Anthology of Conceptual Poetry (based on the online Ubuweb Anthology
of Conceptual Writing) is only one sign of the recent interest
in the “tensions between materiality and concept” (Dworkin),
in a “new new formalism,” based on constraints, both
the Oulipo and Cagean variants, on citationality and found text,
on sound play, and visual device. Is such “non-expressivist” poetry
too extreme? Conceptual Poetry and Its Others brings together
a variety of leading poets to debate the issue. with Caroline Bergvall Poetry Rules!: The Concepts of Poetry with Charles Bernstein The Politics of Conceptual Writing with Craig Dworkin The Poetics of Assemblage with Peter Gizzi Uncreative Writing Workshop with Kenneth Goldsmith Black Conceptual Poetics: Examples for Crafting with Tracie Morris The Visible World: Writing the Visual Arts with Cole Swensen Plus additional sessions, panel discussions, readings and roundtables more info here link | 2-17-08-PM
The
Nation 'With the legalization of gay marriage, faith has been violated and we've been forced to respond', says Charles McVety, the president of Canada Christian College in Toronto.1 Following the logic of McVety's statement - quoted in a New York Times article on religious conservatives' opposition to same-sex marriage in Canada - demonstrates well why arguments from faith often appear to dispense with reasoned debate. What the word 'faith' refers to in McVety's sentence is unclear, or more precisely, it seems to refer both to Christians' belief in God and to heterosexual marriage. With their differences collapsed into the single word faith, the opposition to same-sex marriage and the act of believing in the Christian God become synonymous - they occupy the same cultural and intellectual turf. A specific moral proposition that might otherwise be up for debate is located inside a sphere that cannot be reasonably contested, namely, the Divine. Christian conservatives are hardly alone in holding some beliefs sacred, for on some level all religious and secular philosophies begin with a prior commitment (even if that prior commitment is a dedication to cultural pluralism and open debate). What is remarkable about the above example is how the sentence turns faith into a noun with demarcated borders able to be 'violated'. Here faith becomes a specific conviction held outside the reach of intellectual discussion; faith means grasping the obvious, not negotiating the uncertain. McVety's words are not, however, alone in their formulation of 'faith'. They do not, for one, express a view of faith much different than the one held within many secular, liberal worldviews where faith equally stands in stark contrast to reasoned debate. As Stanley Fish explains, 'For the modern liberal, beliefs are what the mind scrutinizes and judges by rational criteria that are themselves hostage to no belief in particular'.2 To the liberal mind, any conviction, such as an opposition to same-sex marriage, that does not put itself into doubt is antithetical to intellectual investigation (Fish goes on to discuss, in part, the 'belief system' of liberalism). The understanding that faith and critical inquiry occupy different logical systems appears to be one of only a few ideas that people of faith and modern liberals can agree about. And yet, removing faith from the field of critical inquiry runs counter to an older, perhaps even more orthodox conception of faith. In Summa Theologica, Aquinas, following Augustine, writes, 'believing is giving assent to something one is still thinking about. Strictly speaking, we think about what we cannot yet fully see to be true. Believing means putting faith in something, and this resembles knowing in giving firm assent, but resembles doubting, suspecting and holding opinions in having no finished vision of the truth'.3 For Aquinas, God, as the object of faith, is not known with complete certainty. He remains a mystery. But by involving oneself with God, by affirming an understanding of him, Aquinas says that people come to know God more fully, even as their vision of him continues to change. In Aquinas's understanding, faith allows rather than hinders critical inquiry. We do not arrive at our reasons for believing one thing instead of another by way of objective observation or intuition; our evidence is itself an interpretation and arrangement of the cultural and literary texts at our disposal. Without a finished 'vision of the truth', we study what we believe, refashioning it as new events and ideas protrude into our deliberations.4 Holding an idea in faith permits us to persistently develop our understanding of those beliefs that are most crucial to us: faith is not a noun, but a verb - it is something one does, not something one possesses. In the current moment when the language of faith and the language of progressive politics or intellectual sophistication are so often pitted against one another, Aquinas's understanding of faith reminds us of a different intellectual strategy, one that holds onto debate and critical inquiry and still locates knowledge in the fluid, difficult-to-pin-down sphere of uncertainty, conjecture, and association. Here, Aquinas's faith, understood as a critical method, is well suited for answering the questions that permeate our contemporary environment, questions that speak to the anxieties of conservative Christians and secular liberals alike: 'how can we live in a world without certainty; on what can we ground understanding and knowledge?' While the prospect might at first
appear unlikely, Aquinas's faithful method of critical inquiry
runs through much recent innovative poetry, in particular the
work of Charles Bernstein, whose faithfulness draws on the thinking
of Emerson, Wittgenstein, and Stanley Cavell, Bernstein's onetime
teacher. ...
link | 2-17-08
 Eleanor Antin "Constructing Helen" from "Helen's Odyssey," 2007 chromogenic print (61 x 105 3/4 inches) at Ronald Feldman Gallery which opened last night in New York (closes March 15) below: Eleanor Antin at the opening:  photos: Ch. Bernstein
link | 02-10-08
Douglas Messerli Meanwhile ---- & this just in from Steve Evans — Though we at the National Poetry Foundation have had to weather a hard season of loss in these past few months, we are nevertheless pressing ahead with plans for our summer conference on The Poetry of the 1970s. We are very pleased to announce that Rae Armantrout, Nicole Brossard, Clark Coolidge, Jayne Cortez, and Bernadette Mayer have agreed to give plenary poetry readings. And we expect to have more good news on that front in the coming days. The Conference will take place June 11-15, 2008, here at the University of Maine. It will be similar in shape and scope to previous "decade" conferences, but will also feature some innovations. For instance, we'll be collaborating for the first time with both the UMaine Museum of Art and the Colby College Museum of Art to bring the visual arts into the mix. And we'll have a videographer on hand not just to document the plenary proceedings, but also to do studio sessions intended for future webcasting with the many poets (and poet-scholars) who will be in attendance. We'll be making a more concerted use of new media and web resources than in the past. And we expect that a variety of NPF print publications will grow out of the Conference as well. Naturally, a celebration of the lives and accomplishments of Sylvester Pollet and Burton Hatlen is being planned in conjunction with our traditional lobster banquet. We invite paper and panel proposals on all aspects of poetic practice in the Seventies. We also seek scholars and writers who would be willing to serve as panel Chairs. Special registration rates are available for graduate students, independent, and international scholars. Proposal guidelines can be found here: We will begin considering proposals on February 15th. The deadline for proposals is March 31, 2008. Proposals, along with any queries about the proposal process, should be sent electronically to Steve Evans <Steven dot Evans at Maine dot Edu> More information about the Conference is available at our recently revamped website The site is set up to facilitate on-line registration for the Conference. As an incentive for early registration, we will be offering discounts on NPF journal subscriptions and books. On-campus accommodations are available at a reasonable rate through the NPF. We'd also be happy to advise conference participants as to other nearby lodging options and to offer tips on traveling to and from the Bangor area. We appreciate your help in spreading the word about this Conference and hope you'll seriously consider joining us this summer in Orono! On behalf of the Conference Steering Committee consisting of Carla Billitteri, Benjamin Friedlander, Jennifer Moxley, and myself, all best wishes, Steve Evans link | 02-09-08
L=A=N-G=U=A=G=E= L=A=N-G=U=A=G=E L=A=N-G=U=A=G=E
L=A=N-G=U=A=G=E=L=A=N-G=U=A=G=E=L=A=N-G=U=A=G=E=L=A=N-G=U=A=G=E=L=A=N-G=U=A=G=E link | 02-07-07
Barbara Guest
link | 02-05-08
Robert Duncan died twenty years
ago today. I read this at the memorial tribute to Duncan on October 9, 1988, at the Poetry Project of St. Mark's Church: Two Minutes for Robert Duncan It's funny to have to be brief about Robert Duncan, since there is nothing brief about his work or my responses to it. There seems no limit to the breadth and scope Duncan envisioned as a poet's project. Because his endeavor so overwhelms any of the traditional ways we have of defining poetic work – as, say, lyric poems or critical essays – he continually provoked a re-examination of the smallness of scale that characterizes the conception of poetry of many of his more mainstream contemporaries. His research and scholarly preoccupations, his insistence that linguistics and the Dark, Saussure & gnosticism, are sources of the poetic remain an important alternative to residual anti-intellectualism and emotion-fetishizing of much contemporary verse. The fact that Duncan's poetry remained controversial because it was thought to be too intellectual or not plain-spoken enough has given encouragement to at least two subsequent generations of poets, who have taken off on his "permissions" while interpreting them in wildly different ways. For me, the heterodox range of Duncan's sources has had impact even beyond any of his specific enthusiasms. Anyone who has visited his house can attest to the sheer exuberant fantasy and marvelous humor of Duncan and Jess's transformations of these "sources" into a home as rich with whimsy as accumulated knowledge. Duncan inspires one not to accept the given narrative of cultural history but to look to a multiplicity of hidden and suppressed and vilified sources for myth‑shattering revelations about the past and present. This insistence that poetic material is to be found not only, or even primarily, in the hallowed texts of Literature but also in those sources that are without authority is a foundation of his consistently anti-authoritarian, liberatory politics and poetics. It would be ironic if his own explorations and wanderings are sanctified into a new curriculum of required study. The first time I met Robert Duncan, after a performance I did in San Francisco in the mid-70s, he handed me a poem he had written while I was reading and in response to my work. I've often thought about the generosity of the gesture of entrusting me with his only copy of this poem, which went so much beyond any friendly words he might have said at the time. Here is something of what he wrote in the poem: She appeared in a
shift Duncan 's last book, In
the Dark, will always be associated for many of us with the
news of his death. Thinking about that marvelously evocative
title – suggesting both the terrors of unknown and the
grace of fallibility – I kept hearing Lil Green (born,
like Duncan, in 1919) singing her bluesy "Romance in the
Dark," a sound transported from almost fifty years ago,
that seemed to meet this occasion with full force. link | 02-03-08
link | 02-02-08
Richard
Deming
Matthew
G. Kirschenbaum Web
Log RSS FEED now via FeedBurner (as
always RSS via
RSSPECT)
link | 2-01-08
photos:
Charles Bernstein by Mike Freakman New York, Dec. 22, 2007 – Darien
Credenza, the Executive Muckamuck of Amalgamated Writing Programs,
announced that a Morally Repugnant Poets-and-Theorists Exhibit
will be held at the organization's annual congress in New York.
The exhibit is the first of what is planned as a series of didactic
displays at Amalgamated’s popular annual gatherings. link | 01-24-08pm
link | 01-24-08
DEEP
TRANCE BEHAVIOR IN POTATOLAND Photo:Charles
Bernstein
photo:
Bernstein/PennSound 2008 Last
night
Joan
Retallack link | 01-19-07
|
