Charles Bernstein is our postmodern jester of American poesy, equal part
surveyor of democratic vistas and scholar of avant-garde sensibilities.
In a career spanning thirty-five years and forty books, he has
challenged and provoked us with writing that is decidedly unafraid of
the tensions between ordinary and poetic language, and between everyday
life and its adversaries. Attack of the Difficult Poems, his latest
collection of essays, gathers some of his most memorably irreverent work
while addressing seriously and comprehensively the state of contemporary
humanities, the teaching of unconventional forms, fresh approaches to
translation, the history of language media, and the connections between
poetry and visual art.
Applying an array of essayistic styles, Attack of the Difficult Poems
ardently engages with the promise of its title. Bernstein introduces his
key theme of the difficulty of poems and defends, often in comedic ways,
not just difficult poetry but poetry itself. Bernstein never loses his
ingenious ability to argue or his consummate attention to detail. Along
the way, he offers a wide-ranging critique of literature's place in the
academy, taking on the vexed role of innovation and approaching it from
the perspective of both teacher and practitioner.
From blues artists to Tin Pan Alley song lyricists to Second Wave
modernist poets, The Attack of the Difficult Poems sounds both a
battle cry and a lament for the task of the language maker and the fate
of invention.
