Praised in recent years as a "calculating, improvisatory, essential
poet" by Daisy Fried in the New York Times, and as "the foremost
poet-critic of our time" by Craig Dworkin, Charles Bernstein is a
leading voice in American poetry. Near/Miss, Bernstein's first poetry
collection in five years, is the apotheosis of his late style, thick
with off-center rhythms, hilarious riffs, and verbal extravagance.
This collection's title highlights poetry's ability to graze reality
without killing it, and at the same time implies that the poems
themselves are wounded by the grief of loss. The book opens with a
rollicking satire of difficult poetry--proudly declaring itself "a
totally inaccessible poem"--and moves on to the stuff of contrarian pop
culture and political cynicism--full of malaprops, mondegreens,
nonsequiturs, translations of translations, sardonically vandalized
signs, and a hilarious yet sinister feed of blog comments. At the same
time, political protest also rubs up against epic collage, through poems
exploring the unexpected intimacies and continuities of "our united
fates." These poems engage with works by contemporary
painters--including Amy Sillman, Rackstraw Downes, and Etel Adnan--and
echo translations of poets ranging from Catullus and Virgil to Goethe,
Cruz e Souza, and Kandinsky.
Grounded in a politics of multiplicity and dissent, and replete with
both sharp edges and subtle intimacies, Near/Miss is full of close
encounters of every kind.
