"Verse is born free but everywhere in chains. It has been my project to
rattle the chains." (from "The Revenge of the Poet-Critic")
In My Way, (in)famous language poet and critic Charles Bernstein
deploys a wide variety of interlinked forms--speeches and poems,
interviews and essays--to explore the place of poetry in American
culture and in the university. Sometimes comic, sometimes dark,
Bernstein's writing is irreverent but always relevant, "not structurally
challenged, but structurally challenging."
Addressing many interrelated issues, Bernstein moves from the role of
the public intellectual to the poetics of scholarly prose, from
vernacular modernism to idiosyncratic postmodernism, from identity
politics to the resurgence of the aesthetic, from cultural studies to
poetry as a performance art, from the small press movement to the Web.
Along the way he provides "close listening" to such poets as Charles
Reznikoff, Laura Riding, Susan Howe, Ezra Pound, Allen Ginsberg, and
Gertrude Stein, as well as a fresh perspective on L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, the
magazine he coedited that became a fulcrum for a new wave of North
American writing.
In his passionate defense of an activist, innovative poetry, Bernstein
never departs from the culturally engaged, linguistically complex, yet
often very funny writing that has characterized his unique approach to
poetry for over twenty years. Offering some of his most daring work
yet--essays in poetic lines, prose with poetic motifs, interviews miming
speech, speeches veering into song--Charles Bernstein's My Way
illuminates the newest developments in contemporary poetry with its own
contributions to them.
"The result of [Bernstein's] provocative groping is more stimulating
than many books of either poetry or criticism have been in recent
years."--Molly McQuade, Washington Post Book World
"This book, for all of its centrifugal activity, is a singular yet
globally relevant perspective on the literary arts and their
institutions, offered in good faith, yet cranky and poignant enough to
not be easily ignored."--Publishers Weekly
"Bernstein has emerged as postmodern poetry's sous-chef of
insouciance. My Way is another of his rich concoctions, fortified with
intellect and seasoned with laughter."--Timothy Gray, American
Literature
