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Review
Charles Bernstein, the co-founder of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine and considered a leading figure of the “Language” school, has been a consistently challenging and original voice in contemporary poetry. This new collection comprised of chapbooks and limited edition publications displays Bernstein’s fluidity with a variety of poetic forms and techniques, ranging from radical experimentation to the more traditional lyric. Thematically, Bernstein’s work ranges from grappling with the mundane to struggling to find linguistic and poetic forms for experience. In “Sentences” one of the poems from the earliest collection, Bernstein uses a minimalist serialist form, listing a variety of anxieties, problems and worries ("I look at the young people./I’m not going to change my language./I said nothing to anyone") that retains and builds upon a narrative and mood. This early poem contrasts with the more “conventional” poems from the most recent collection, “Residual Rubbernecking” (1995). In these poems more familiar poetic sentiments and forms are energized with many twists to conventions. In “Poem,” Bernstein begins with a kind of grand poetic gesture, “A soul is an imaginary thing we bestow on what we love” followed in just a few lines by the more playful, “...Which is to say, Don’t put any interference between me and my car, fork, bungled/baton...” There is an original richness and versatility to Bernstein’s poetry. Bernstein’s humor (“Who would have thought Paul McCartney would be/the Perry Como of the 1990s?” from “Mao Tse Tung Wore Khakis”), philosophic explorations, and sensitivity to the anxieties of everyday life (boredom, relationships, procrastination, vacancy, etc.) bounce off and enhance one another in consistently challenging and satisfying ways. Read an interview with Charles Bernstein.
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