Charles Bernstein
Encyclopedia
Charles Bernstein is an American poet, theorist, editor, and literary scholar. Bernstein holds the Donald T. Regan
Donald Regan
Donald Thomas Regan ,was the 66th United States Secretary of the Treasury, from 1981 to 1985, and Chief of Staff from 1985 to 1987 in the Ronald Reagan Administration, where he advocated "Reaganomics" and tax cuts to create jobs and stimulate production.-Early life:Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts,...

 Chair in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

. He is one of the most prominent members of the Language poets
Language poets
The Language poets are an avant garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s...

 (or L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E (magazine)
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E was an avant garde poetry magazine edited by Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews that ran thirteen issues from 1978 to 1981...

). In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...

. In 2005, Bernstein was awarded the Dean's Award for Innovation in Teaching at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

. Educated at Harvard College, he has been visiting Professor of Poetry, Poetics, and Creative Writing at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...

, and Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

. A volume of Bernstein's selected poetry from the past thirty years, "All the Whiskey in Heaven," was published in 2010 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Bernstein's continued commitment to small presses remains strong - In the same year that FSG released his major collection, Chax Press
Chax Press
Chax Press is a publisher of experimental and avant-garde poetry run by bookmaker and poet Charles Alexander. The press publishes trade paperback and handmade fine arts editions...

 released "Umbra," a collection of Berstein's latest translations of poems from multiple languages. The Salt Companion to Charles Bernstein is forthcoming from Salt Publishing
Salt Publishing
Salt Publishing is an independent publisher whose origins date back to 1990 when poet John Kinsella launched Salt Magazine in Western Australia. The journal rapidly developed an international reputation as a leading publisher of new poetry and poetics...

. Bernstein will serve as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Poetry, Poetics, and Theory at Princeton University in the Fall Term of 2011. In May of the same year, The University of Chicago Press will release Bernstein's new collection of essays, "Attack of the Difficult Poems: Essays and Inventions."

Early Life and Work

Bernstein was born in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 to a Jewish family and attended the Bronx High School of Science
Bronx High School of Science
The Bronx High School of Science is a specialized New York City public high school often considered the premier science magnet school in the United States. Founded in 1938, it is now located in the Bedford Park section of the Bronx...

, graduating in 1968. Bernstein then matriculated at Harvard College
Harvard College
Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...

, majoring in Philosophy, studying the work of Austin and Wittgenstein under Stanley Cavell
Stanley Cavell
Stanley Louis Cavell is an American philosopher. He is the Walter M. Cabot Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University.-Life:...

, a seminal figure in the Philosophy of Language and Ordinary Language Philosophy
Ordinary language philosophy
Ordinary language philosophy is a philosophical school that approaches traditional philosophical problems as rooted in misunderstandings philosophers develop by distorting or forgetting what words actually mean in everyday use....

. Bernstein graduated Harvard College
Harvard College
Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...

 in 1972, and during his time there worked closely with Stanley Cavell
Stanley Cavell
Stanley Louis Cavell is an American philosopher. He is the Walter M. Cabot Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University.-Life:...

, who oversaw his thesis, a study that pursued the aesthetic and poetic possibilities of the amalgamation of analytical philosophy and avant-garde literature. His first book, Asylums, was published in 1975. Together with Bruce Andrews
Bruce Andrews
Bruce Andrews is a U.S. poet who is one of the key figures associated with the Language poets .-Life and work:...

 he edited the magazine L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E (magazine)
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E was an avant garde poetry magazine edited by Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews that ran thirteen issues from 1978 to 1981...

, which ran to 13 issues between 1978 and 1981. This is routinely considered to be the starting point of Language Poetry and was the most significant outlet for both the progressive poetry and progressive poetic theory taking place in New York City and Berkeley. He has said about the creation of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E (magazine)
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E was an avant garde poetry magazine edited by Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews that ran thirteen issues from 1978 to 1981...

, "We tried to trace a history of radical poetics, taking up the model presented in Jerome Rothenberg’s Revolution of the Word, and later by Rothenberg and Pierre Joris in Poems for the Millennium and Marjorie Perloff in The Futurist Moment. When you go back 30 years, you see that poetics that now are widely accepted as foundational for contemporary poetry were harshly rejected then." Bernstein and Andrews published selected pieces from these 13 issues in The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book. During this period, Bernstein also published three more books of his own poetry, Parsing (1976), Shade (1978) and Poetic Justice (1979), while earning a living as a freelance medical writer.

Recent Life and Works

From 1989 to 2003, Bernstein was David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters at the University at Buffalo
University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, also commonly known as the University at Buffalo or UB, is a public research university and a "University Center" in the State University of New York system. The university was founded by Millard Fillmore in 1846. UB has multiple campuses...

, where he was co-founder and Director of the Poetics Program. He is also co-founder of The Electronic Poetry Center
Electronic Poetry Center
The Electronic Poetry Center, sponsored by various departments at SUNY Buffalo, is an online resource for digital poetry. It was founded in 1995 by Loss Pequeño Glazier and Charles Bernstein, making it one of the oldest resources for poetry on the World Wide Web...

 at Buffalo. He is currently the Donald T. Regan Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

, where he is co-founder of the poetry audio archive PennSound
PennSound
PennSound is a poetry website and online archive that hosts free and downloadable recordings of poets reading their own work. The webiste offers over 1500 full-length and single-poem recordings, the largest collection of poetry sound-files on the internet, all of which are available free for...

. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Mr. and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died April 26, 1922...

, the New York Foundation for the Arts
New York Foundation for the Arts
The New York Foundation for the Arts was created in conjunction the in 1971. The organization gives grants to individual artists and writers and developing arts organizations with a mission to '.'-NYFA's Programs:...

, and the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

, and of the Roy Harvey Pearce/Archive for New Poetry Prize of the University of California, San Diego. Since 1980, he has published a further eighteen books of poetry, as well as editing a number of anthologies of prose and verse. Working with the composers Ben Yarmolinsky, Dean Drummond
Dean Drummond
Dean Drummond is an American composer, conductor and musician. His music utilises microtonality, electronics, and a huge variety of percussion...

, and Brian Ferneyhough
Brian Ferneyhough
Brian John Peter Ferneyhough is an English composer. His music is characterized by the extensive use of complex rhythmic tuplet notation which features in all his works...

, he has written the libretti for five operas and has collaborated with a number of visual artists, including his wife, Susan Bee
Susan Bee
Susan Bee is a painter, editor, and book artist who lives in New York City. She has had six solo shows at A.I.R. Gallery in New York, and has published six artist's books with Granary Books...

, Richard Tuttle
Richard Tuttle
Richard Dean Tuttle is an American postminimalist artist known for his small, subtle, intimate works. His art makes use of scale and line.- Biography :...

, and Mimi Gross
Mimi Gross
Mimi Gross is a New York City born artist. She is the daughter of the sculptor Chaim Gross. From 1963-1976 she was married to the artist Red Grooms who was her collaborator on many projects...

. Bernstein's Poetry has appeared in four editions of David Lehman
David Lehman
David Lehman is a poet and the series editor for The Best American Poetry series. He teaches at The New School in New York City.-Career:...

's The Best American Poetry series, most recently in the 2008 edition. His work has also regularly appeared in Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...

, Poetry Magazine, and Critical Inquiry
Critical Inquiry
Critical Inquiry is a peer-reviewed academic journal in the humanities published by the University of Chicago Press. It is considered a leading journal within literary studies, and particularly in the field of critical theory....

. While Bernstein has supported small presses throughout his career, he has also published on such mainstream academic presses as Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...

, Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Its current director is William P...

, Northwestern University Press
Northwestern University Press
Northwestern University Press is the university press of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, USA.- History :Northwestern University Press was founded in 1893, at first specializing in legal periodicals. Today, the Press publishes scholarly books of fiction, non-fiction, and literary...

, and, most recently, The University of Chicago Press, which has published his last three major works. The publication of All the Whiskey in Heaven by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in 2010 was his most commercial endeavor to date. He has said about his work, "It’s true that, on the one hand, I mock and destabilize the foundation of a commitment to lyric poetry as an address toward truth or toward sincerity. But, on the other hand, if you’re interested in theory as a stable expository mode of knowledge production or critique moving toward truth, again, I should be banned from your republic. (I’ve already been banned from mine.) My vacillating poetics of poems and essays is a serial practice, a play of voices."

Bernstein was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...

 in 2006. He appeared in the 2000 movie Finding Forrester
Finding Forrester
EnglishFinding Forrester is a 2000 American drama film written by Mike Rich and directed by Gus Van Sant. A black American teenager, Jamal Wallace , is invited into a prestigious private high school. By chance, Jamal befriends a reclusive writer, William Forrester , through whom he refines his...

, as Dr. Simon and in a series of 1999 TV commercials, with Jon Lovitz
Jon Lovitz
Jonathan "Jon" Lovitz is an American comedian, actor, and singer. He is best known as a cast member of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live from 1985 to 1990.-Early life:...

, for the Yellow Pages
Yellow Pages
Yellow Pages refers to a telephone directory of businesses, organized by category, rather than alphabetically by business name and in which advertising is sold. As the name suggests, such directories were originally printed on yellow paper, as opposed to white pages for non-commercial listings...

.

Full-length collections

  • All the Whiskey in Heaven (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010)
  • Girly Man (University of Chicago Press, 2006)
  • Shadowtime (libretto for an opera with music by Brian Ferneyhough
    Brian Ferneyhough
    Brian John Peter Ferneyhough is an English composer. His music is characterized by the extensive use of complex rhythmic tuplet notation which features in all his works...

    ) (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2005)
  • With Strings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001)
  • Republics of Reality: 1975-1995 (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 2000)
  • Dark City (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1994)
  • Rough Trades (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1991)
  • The Sophist (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1987; rpt. Cambridge, UK: Salt Publishing
    Salt Publishing
    Salt Publishing is an independent publisher whose origins date back to 1990 when poet John Kinsella launched Salt Magazine in Western Australia. The journal rapidly developed an international reputation as a leading publisher of new poetry and poetics...

    , 2004)
  • Islets/Irritations (New York: Jordan Davies, 1983; rpt. New York: Roof Books, 1992)
  • The Nude Formalism, with Susan Bee (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1989; rpt Charlottesville, VA: Outside Voices, 2006)
  • Controlling Interests (New York: Roof Books, 1980)
  • L E G E N D, with Bruce Andrews, Steve McCaffery
    Steve McCaffery
    Steven McCaffery is a Canadian poet and scholar who was a professor at York University. He currently holds the Gray Chair at SUNY Buffalo . McCaffery was born in Sheffield, England and lived in the UK for most of his youth attending University of Hull. He moved to Toronto in 1968...

    , Ron Silliman
    Ron Silliman
    Ron Silliman is an American poet. He has written and edited over 30 books, and has had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. He is often associated with language poetry. Between 1979 and 2004, Silliman wrote a single poem, The Alphabet...

    , Ray DiPalma
    Ray DiPalma
    Ray DiPalma , is an American poet and visual artist who has published more than 40 collections of poetry, graphic work, and translations with various presses in the US and Europe...

     (New York: L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E/Segue, 1980)
  • Poetic Justice (Baltimore: Pod Books, 1979)
  • Shade (College Park, MD: Sun & Moon Press, 1978)
  • Parsing (New York: Asylum's Press, 1976)
  • Asylums (New York: Asylum's Press, 1975)

Essays

  • Attack of the Difficult Poems (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011)
  • My Way: Speeches and Poems (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)
  • A Poetics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992)
  • Content's Dream: Essays 1975-1984 (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1986; rpt Northwestern University Press, 2001)
  • A Conversation with David Antin
    David Antin
    David Antin is a United States poet and critic. In the late 1960s, Antin began performing extemporaneously, improvising "talk poems" at readings and exhibitions...

    (New York: Granary Books, 2002)
  • "Artifice of Absorption: An Essay" (Singing Horse Press, 1987) (Potes & Poets Press, 1988)

Editor

  • Modern and Contemporary Poetics, Editor, with Hank Lazer, of a book series from the University of Alabama Press (1998 — )
  • Electronic Poetry Center, Editor, with Loss Pequeno Glazier (1995 — )
  • PENNSound, Director , with Al Filries (2003 — )
  • Poetry Plastique, ed. with Jay Sanders, exhibition catalog (New York: Granary Books / Marianne Boesky Gallery, 2001)
  • 99 Poets/1999: A Special Issue of boundary 2 (Vol.26, No.1: Duke University Press, 1999)
  • Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)
  • LINEbreak: poetry interviews, host/co-producer. Twenty-six 30-minute programs, dist. Public Radio Satellite Program and on the Internet at the EPC (1995–96)
  • Live at the Ear : A CD anthology of Ear Inn readings (Pittsburg: Elemenope Productions, 1994)
  • "13 North American Poets", with Susan Howe
    Susan Howe
    Susan Howe is a American poet, scholar, essayist and critic, who has been closely associated with the Language poets, among others poetry movements. Her work is often classified as Postmodern because it expands traditional notions of genre...

    , in TXT #31 (Le Mans, France and Bussels: 1993)
  • The Politics of Poetic Form: Poetry and Public Policy (NY: Roof, 1990)
  • Patterns/Contexts/Time: A Forum: 1989, with Phillip Foss in Tyuonyi (Sante Fe, 1990).
  • "L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Lines" in The Line in Postmodern Poetry, ed. Frank/Sayre (Urbana:
    University of Illinois, 1988)
  • "43 Poets (1984)" in Boundary 2 (Binghamton, 1987)
  • The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book, with Bruce Andrews (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984)
  • "Language Sampler" in Paris Review, No. 86 (New York: 1982)
  • L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, with Bruce Andrews (New York: 1978-1981); Vol. 4 co-published as Open Letter 5:1 (Toronto: 1982)
  • Louis Zukofksy: Selected Poems, [American Poets Project], (Library of America; distributed by Penguin Putnam, Inc) (New York: 2006)

Translation

  • Red, Green, and Black by Olivier Cadiot (Hartford: Potes & Poets, 1990)
  • The Maternal Drape by Claude Royet-Journoud
    Claude Royet-Journoud
    Claude Royet-Journoud is a contemporary French poet and artist living in Paris .-Overview:Royet-Journoud's publications in French include his tetralogy, published between 1972 and 1997: Le Renversement, La Notion d'Obstacle, Les Objets contiennent l'infini, and Les Natures indivisibles...

     (Windsor, VT: Awede Press, 1984)
    95)

External links



Writing

Others on Bernstein
  • Poet and Anti-Poet Review from the New York Times by Daisy Fried
    Daisy Fried
    -Life:She graduated from Swarthmore College in 1989.Her work has appeared in The Nation, Poetry, The New Republic, American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Threepenny Review, Triquarterly....

    , published April 7, 2010
  • Of Time and Charles Bernstein’s Lines: A Poetics of Fashion Statements by Susan M. Schultz, in Jacket
    Jacket (magazine)
    Jacket is an on-line literary periodical edited by the Australian poet John Tranter. The first issue was in October 1997.Each new number of the magazine is posted at the Web site piece by piece until the new issue is full, when the next issue starts. Past issues remain posted as well...

    , July 2001


Interviews with Bernstein
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