Charles Bernstein Papers
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The New Sentence 22
THE NEW SENTENCE 22 I, ! 1,1 ' I Ill. II I,I' , I To please a young man there should be I sentences. What are sentences. Like what are sentences. In the part of sentences it for him is happily all. They will name sentences for him. Sentences are called ",I sentences. , Gertrude Stein The sale precedent I can find for the new sentence is Kara In !{ell: Improvisations and that one far-fetched. I am going to make an argument, that there is such a rhing as a new sentence and that it occurs thus far more or less exclusively in rhe prose of the Bay Area. Therefore this talk is aimed ar the 'luestion of rhe prose poem. I say aimed because, in order to undersrand why so little is in fact understood about sentences and prose poems, a certain amount of background material is needed. The proposition of a new sentence suggests a general understanding of sentences per se, against which an evolution or .. hift can be contrasted. This poses a first problem. There is, in the domain of Iinguistics, philosophy and literary criticism, no adequate consensus .It to the definition of a sentence. Odd as that seems, thete ate I reasons for it. Milka lvii:, in Trends in Linguistics, noted that linguists, by the 1930's, had proposed and were using mote than 160 diffetent definitions of "the sentence." The word sentence is itself of relatively recent origin, 63 according to the OED, deriving from 12th Century French. As a until gradually the intonation contours of normal speec~ are noun, the OED proposes 9 definitions. -
Lyn Hejinian “The Inanimate Are Rocks, Desks, Bubble,” 50 from My Life 51 from Writing Is an Aid to Memory 54 the Green 57 “The Erosion of Rocks Blooms
in the american tree Silliman in the american tree Second Edition, with a new Afterword by Ron Silliman The “Language Poets” have extended the Pound-Williams (or perhaps the Pound-Williams- in the americanlanguage tree realism poetry Zukofsky-Stein) tradition in American writing into new and unexpected territories. In the process, these poets have established themselves as the most rigorous and the most radically experi- mental avant-garde on the current literary scene. This anthology offers the most substantial col- lection of work by the Language Poets now available, along with 130 pages of theoretic statements by poets included in the anthology. As such, In the American Tree does for a new generation of American poets what Don Allen’s The New American Poetry did for an earlier generation. The poets represented include Robert Grenier, Barrett Watten, Lyn Hejinian, Bob Perelman, Michael Palmer, Michael Davidson, Clark Coolidge, Charles Bernstein, Hannah Weiner, Bruce Andrews, Susan Howe, Fanny Howe, Bernadette Mayer, Ray DiPalma, and many others. “For millennia, poets have had to make their own way and the world that goes with it. The genius of these various writers and the consummate clartiy with which they are presented here make very clear again that not only is this the road now crucial for all poetry, it’s literally where we are going.” –Robert Creeley “This historic anthology brings into long-needed focus the only serious and concerted movement in American literature of the past two decades. It will be indispensible to anyone with interest in writ- ing’s present and hope for writing’s future.” –Peter Schjeldahl “Provocative in its critique and antidote, this collection invites the curious writer/reader to question all assumptions regarding generally agreed upon values of poetic language practices. -
Yiddish and the Avant-Garde in American Jewish Poetry Sarah
Yiddish and the Avant-Garde in American Jewish Poetry Sarah Ponichtera Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2012 ©2012 Sarah Ponichtera All rights reserved All Louis Zukofsky material Copyright Paul Zukofsky; the material may not be reproduced, quoted, or used in any manner whatsoever without the explicit and specific permission of the copyright holder. A fee will be charged. ABSTRACT Yiddish and the Avant-Garde in American Jewish Poetry Sarah Ponichtera This dissertation traces the evolution of a formalist literary strategy through the twentieth century in both Yiddish and English, through literary and historical analyses of poets and poetic groups from the turn of the century until the 1980s. It begins by exploring the ways in which the Yiddish poet Yehoash built on the contemporary interest in the primitive as he developed his aesthetics in the 1900s, then turns to the modernist poetic group In zikh (the Introspectivists) and their efforts to explore primitive states of consciousness in individual subjectivity. In the third chapter, the project turns to Louis Zukofsky's inclusion of Yehoash's Yiddish translations of Japanese poetry in his own English epic, written in dialogue with Ezra Pound. It concludes with an examination of the Language poets of the 1970s, particularly Charles Bernstein's experimental verse, which explores the way that language shapes consciousness through the use of critical and linguistic discourse. Each of these poets or poetic groups uses experimental poetry as a lens through which to peer at the intersections of language and consciousness, and each explicitly identifies Yiddish (whether as symbol or reality) as an essential component of their poetic technique. -
CHARLES BERNSTEIN & HANNAH WEINER Interview for Linebreak
CHARLES BERNSTEIN & HANNAH WEINER Interview for LINEbreak I was intrigued when I discovered, in the course of seeking permission to publish this transcript, that Hannah Weiner’s 1995 conversation with Charles Bernstein for the public radio program LINEbreak had been edited down for broadcast. The show’s producer, Martín Spinelli, replied quickly to my e-mail: “[Hannah’s] recording session was one of the longest we did for the series.” The raw tape of the session is preserved in Spi- nelli’s archive at the immense UB Poetry Collection, and runs about twenty minutes longer than the broadcast version ar- chived at http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/LINEbreak. html. In keeping with the spirit of Weiner’s own impusle to let her “nonliterary” surround in, I have transcribed all the conver- sation on the tape. — Robert Dewhurst One extremely hot summer afternoon in 1995 Charles Bern- stein and I drove across Manhattan to Hannah Weiner’s clut- tered but comfortable apartment to record her for our radio series LINEbreak. Charles and I had been recording other po- ets and writers for the series and Hannah was one of last (if not the last) to be taped. This would turn out to be her last broadcast interview before her death. As I set up the recording equipment we wondered about the noise coming in from the open windows and decided to close them for better acoustics. 141 WILD ORCHIDS But even as we sweated in her airless living room the noise from the street made it through and prompted me to stop a couple of times. -
Laura Riding Pointed to the Fact That, Looking at the Canon Of
UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SANTA CATARINA PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO EM LETRAS/INGLÊS E LITERATURA CORRESPONDENTE MINDSCAPES: LAURA RIDING’S POETRY AND POETICS por RODRIGO GARCIA LOPES Tese submetida à Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina em cumprimento parcial dos requisitos para obtenção do grau de DOUTOR EM LETRAS FLORI.\NOPOLIS Dezembro de 2000 Esta Tese de Rodrigo Garcia Lopes, intitulada MINDSCAPES: LAURA RIDING’S POETRY AND POETICS, foi julgada adequada e aprovada em sua forma final, pelo Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente, da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, para fms de obtenção do grau de DOUTOR EM LETRAS Área de concentração; Inglês e Literatura Correspondente Opção: Literaturas de Língua Inglesa Anelise Reich Corseuil Coordenadora BANCA EXAMINADORA; é Roberto O ’Shea ientador e Presidente 'h/y Maria Lúcia MiUéo Martins Examinadora Susana Bornéo Funck Examinadora J^iz Angé^o da Costa Examinador ífid Renaux Examinadora Florianópolis, 11 de dezembro de 2000 In the memory of Laura (Riding Jackson (1901-1991) To my parents, Antonio Ubirajara Lopes and Maria do Carmo Garcia Lopes IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the several people and institutions that helped me, in inestimable ways, to succeed in accomplishing the present thesis. To my advisor, José Roberto O’Shea, for his infinite patience, collaboration, and understanding. To CAPES, for conceding me the scholarship that provided the necessary means to carry out original research on Laura Riding collections in the United States. To The Board of Literary Management of tiie late Laura (Riding Jackson: Dr. James Tyler, Dr. William Harmon, Robert Nye, Theodore Wilentz, Joan Wilentz, and especially to Alan J. -
LANGUAGE POETRY Entry for the Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poetry (2005)
Craig Dworkin: LANGUAGE POETRY Entry for The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poetry (2005) The discrepancy between the number of people who hold an opinion about Language Poetry and those who have actually read Language Poetry is perhaps greater than for any other literary phenomenon of the later twentieth century. For just one concrete indicator of this gap, a primer on "The Poetry Pantheon" in The New York Times Magazine (19 February, 1995) listed Paul Hoover, Ann Lauterbach, and Leslie Scalapino as the most representative “Language Poets” — a curious choice given that neither Hoover nor Lauterbach appears in any of the defining publications of Language Poetry, and that Scalapino, though certainly associated with Language Poetry, was hardly a central figure. Indeed, only a quarter-century after the phrase was first used, it has often come to serve as an umbrella term for any kind of self-consciously "postmodern" poetry or to mean no more than some vaguely imagined stylistic characteristics — parataxis, dryly apodictic abstractions, elliptical modes of disjunction — even when they appear in works that would actually seem to be fundamentally opposed to the radical poetics that had originally given such notoriety to the name “Language Poetry” in the first place. The term "language poetry" may have first been used by Bruce Andrews, in correspondence from the early 1970s, to distinguish poets such as Vito Hannibal Acconci, Carl Andre, Clark Coolidge, and Jackson Mac Low, whose writing challenged the vatic aspirations of “deep image” poetry. In the tradition of Gertrude Stein and Louis Zukofksy, such poetry found precedents in only the most anomalous contemporary writing, such as John Ashbery's The Tennis Court Oath, Aram Saroyan's Cofee Coffe, Joseph Ceravolo's Fits of Dawn, or Jack Kerouac's Old Angel Midnight. -
Language Poetry and Ecopoetry: a Shared Pragmatic Work
Language Poetry and Ecopoetry: A Shared Pragmatic Work in A.R. Ammons, Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe, and W.S. Merwin Jack Massie A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of East Anglia School of American Studies August 2018 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived therefrom must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. 1 Abstract The central aim of this thesis is to demonstrate that A.R. Ammons, Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe, and W.S. Merwin commit to a pragmatic poetic project of working language to facilitate cultural renewal. In illuminating this shared pragmatic work in poems from the turn of the 1990s, the thesis contradicts ecocritical assertions about the inimical relationship between ecopoetry and postmodern poetries such as Language. As ecocriticism established itself as a school of literary criticism in the 1990s, its proponents were damning of the influence postmodern literary theory was exerting on American poetry. Ecocritics argued that postmodernism had dangerously devalued the referential relationship between word and world at a time of escalating environmental crises. Taking Bernstein and Howe as representatives of Language poetry, and Ammons and Merwin as representatives of ecopoetry, the thesis will contest this ecocritical argument by illustrating that these four poets share a vision of poetry as a uniquely positioned medium for rejuvenating language and, subsequently, shifting cultural attitudes in a politically progressive manner. -
Information to Users
INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy sutimitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorged copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9* black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. ProQuest Information and Leaming 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 UMÏ EIHETORICAL HYBRIDITY: ASHBERY, BERNSTEIN AND THE POETICS OF CITAHON DISSERTATION Presented in. Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree Doctor of Philosophy m the Graduate School o f The Ohio State University By \fatthew Richardson^ hlA . ***** The Ohio State Unwersity 2001 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Jon Erickson. Adviser Professor Jessica Prinz . -
Charles Bernstein (1950– ) to Date the Beginning of a Poet's Authority
Charles Bernstein (1950– ) To date the beginning of a poet’s authority one often looks to the poet’s first book, which in Charles Bernstein’s case is Asylums, published in 1975. Bernstein’s effect on American poetry, however, truly began in 1978, when with Bruce Andrews he started L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine, which ran until 1981. Practically at the same time, then, Bernstein’s presence was announced both as a poet and as someone orchestrating new means of community (re)formation. In the last quarter century, he has lived both roles simultaneously as a refutation of the idea that poets write in isolation. His poetry and his community work have walked in step with each other, neither one possible without the other. Alongside the publishing of well over twenty books of poetry, Bernstein started or helped to start two reading series (Ear Inn in New York, and Wednesdays @ 4 Plus in Buffalo), a website (Electronic Poetry Center), an email discussion list (Poetics@), and an academic book series on Modern and Contemporary Poetics (with University of Alabama Press). His provocative essays have now been collected three times, in Content’s Dream (1986), A Poetics (1992) and My Way (1999), and he has edited or co-edited numerous collections of essays, including The Politics of Poetic Form: Poetry and Public Policy (1990) and Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word (1998). Playing on Robert Creeley’s well known expression of the relationship between form and content, one could say with Bernstein’s career in mind [111] that poets are never more than extensions of their community. -
P. Seaton – Selected Bibliography*1
P. Seaton – Selected bibliography*1 *Compiled and edited by Christian Roess (C.R.) Primary Sources I. – Seaton’s Works (by year) [the symbol † before the (year) indicates that currently I have a copy — C.R. ] [ the symbol § indicates available on-line via the Web/internet access] 2 [ bold print indicates a full-length collection, book, or chapbook. Individual works--- poems, prose --- are indicated in italics by “quotation marks”; journals and magazines are underlined] ● † (1977a) Interstices in Slit Wrist [Volume 3/4: Double Issue / Spring-1977] edited by Terry Swanson (New York, NY) 188 pp. Interstices (p 33-52) consists of the following works: 1) "Reserves" (p. 35) 2) "U nder a Microscope" (p. 36) 1 As of 19 September 2010. This “Bibliography” is missing quite a bit apparently. I know that it is missing a reference to Primary Writing (edited by Phyllis Rosenzweig & Diane Ward)--- the sixth issue of which (April 1996) was a broadside featuring work by Jessica Grimm and Peter Seaton. Also missing is reference to the issue of M. Champion’s Tongue to Boot that placed work by Seaton. A web search has C. Bernstein, in an email to Craig Dworkin (Nov. 14, 2000) writing: “I have only seen a few poems from the early 90s, probably, that were in Big Allis”. Did Big Allis publish any of Seaton’s work? I have been unsuccessful tracking down any leads on “Imaginary Ship”, supposedly published by Beaumont Press. Also, a search on the “Google Books” site lists collaboration between Seaton and N. Piombino called Interstices, with a publication date of 1974. -
Poetics in a Networked Digital Milieu Michael Nardone
Poetics in a Networked Digital Milieu Michael Nardone College Literature, Volume 47, Number 1, Winter 2020, pp. 248-258 (Article) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/746212 Access provided at 15 Jan 2020 00:21 GMT from Concordia University Library POETICS IN A NETWORKED DIGITAL MILIEU MICHAEL NARDONE In the study of what writing is, has been, and might be, the figure of the archive and the discourse of poetics fuse together. Not confined to a singular narrative or trajectory, but a vast territory or “complex volume” of articulations in which “heterogeneous regions are dif- ferentiated or deployed in accordance with specific rules and prac- tices that cannot be superposed” (Foucault 2002, 145), the figure of the archive and the discourse of poetics concern the assembling and organization of past compositions, the transmission of their inscrip- tions into the present, and the viable futures those traces make leg- ible. If, as Kate Eichhorn argues, “to write in a digital age is to write in the archive” (2008, 1), what can the composition of archives—their materials, contexts of production, protocols, and interfaces—teach us about poetics today? In my contribution to this critical forum, I focus on a specific archival genre, the digital repository, which, with the rapid expan- sion of digital networks since the mid-1990s, has served as a primary means for extending the purview and program of poetics as a con- temporary institutional formation. I detail, briefly, the development of three significant examples of poetry- and poetics-related digital repositories—the University at Buffalo’s Electronic Poetry Center, Kenneth Goldsmith’s UbuWeb, and the University of Pennsylva- nia’s PennSound—so as to describe their impact on the publication, COLLEGE LITERATURE: A JOURNAL OF CRITICAL LITERARY STUDIES 47.1 Winter 2020 Print ISSN 0093-3139 E-ISSN 1542-4286 © Johns Hopkins University Press and West Chester University 2020 Michael Nardone | Forum 249 dissemination, and storage of poetic works. -
In Early March 1981, Lyn Sent a Letter to Barrett, Bob, Charles Bernstein, Ron, and Steve, Proposing That Each Would Write A
In early March 1981, Lyn sent a letter to Barrett, Bob, Charles Bernstein, Ron, and Steve, proposing that each would write a page on a topic that she named, the whole to serve as an introduction to a selection of Language writings in French translation that would appear in Change magazine, as part of the March 1982 issue focused on “L’espace amérique,” edited (with an additional introduction) by Nanos Valaoritis. In 1989, our same six-person introduction was retranslated into Serbian and published in an issue of Delo, in Yugoslavia. Here is the six-person introduction. Ron Silliman, Barrett Watten, Steve Benson, Lyn Hejinian, Charles Bernstein, Bob Perelman Begun in the sixties, the writing of the American poets gathered here for Change matured into an organized, ongoing literary discourse in the following decade, a period of significant transition for the United States. From the perspective of capital, the war in Indochina was lost, a critical blow to national military prestige. More importantly, 1974 marked the end of capital’s longest “boom,” the expansionist years following the Second World War (on top of which the essential optimism of every variety of “New American” poetry had been constructed). Simultaneously, the largest generation in U.S. history, the “baby boom” of the 40’s and early 50’s, passed from college to the daily practices of material life. Tied to that generation and crippled from the beginning by its rejection of historical knowledge, the American New Left rapidly dissolved, although several of its veterans were to re-emerge as leaders of cross-class movements based on forms of personal oppression, as women or as gays of either sex.