Charles Bernstein Recants : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation

Kenneth Goldsmith

Charles Bernstein Recants

TUCSON, May 31 — Charles Bernstein, best known as the co-editor of the influential 1970s journal L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E and a prime proponent of the poetry movement by same name publicly renounced many of the positions that he had abided by over the past three decades.
Bernstein, who has a volume of Selected Poems forthcoming from a major New York trade publisher, appeared before a crowd of several hundred at the Conceptual Poetry conference at the University of Arizona Thursday afternoon and admitted his mistakes in the form of a lengthy poem, “Recantorium (a bachelor machine, after Duchamp after Kafka).”
Mr. Bernstein backed away from his negative opinion of what he has termed “official verse culture,” saying that these poets do, in fact, “represent the best and the finest, the most profound and significant, the richest and most rewarding, poetry of our nation.”
Mr. Bernstein, who once held the opinion that only elitist and obscure poetry should be praised, now claims that “only poets working in solitude and individually can produce poems of enduring value” and has embraced “a poetry without limits of time or place, a poetry universal address and true to the timeless human spirit.” In addition, he now advocates that “clearly written expository prose, with a delineated argument including a beginning, middle, and end, is the only guarantor of Rational Mind.”

05.31.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (14)

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14 Comments for “Charles Bernstein Recants”

I don’t believe a W-O-R-D of this.
(Having accidentally and previously posted this comment in response to Major Jackson’s post, it is now unoriginal.)
Posted By: Emily Warn on May 31, 2008 at 1:01 pm
On the contrary, I’m sure it’s true. Many of us have seen it coming for a long time. . . The day I knew the writing was on the wall was when he told me, “the only real difference between the work of the post-avant and my neighbor across the hall at the university, Carl Dennis, is in the way it is received and written about. . .”
Posted By: Annie Finch on May 31, 2008 at 2:09 pm
At last, timeless poetry - better late than never.
Posted By: Samuel Vriezen on May 31, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Um….. I think it’s meant to be sarcasm
Posted By: Vivek Narayanan on June 1, 2008 at 12:00 am
My thought chamber’s been clocked askew over this. Isn’t Charles Bernstein a poet of
irony/parody/satire, a probable Alexander Pope for our time? It may well be he was being
on the horizontal at the symposium in Arizona, but for me only the photo of him here is an
indication of that. If so, my feeling is–from what it is said he said–he went too far.
Saying that “the only real difference between the work of the post-avant and my neighbor
across the hall at the university, Carl Dennis, is in the way it is received and written
about. . . .” (thank you, Annie Finch) doesn’t indicate a solid position one way or another.
Given the number of poets now writing, each one with a personality at a different
location on the personality scale at any one time, and given that the same is true for
those who read poems, chances are there are audiences for poems made from a myriad
of aeathetic stances. Saying that “only poets working in solitude and individually
can produce poems of enduring value” suffers from a similar vagueness. Even in a
collaborative effort, each poet is working alone in her/his own solitude, such as it is;
and there is no reason a collaborative effort can’t produce an enduring poem.
To mess with Gertrude Stein’s
“A rose is a rose is a rose”
by changing it to:
“Creativity is creativity is creativity.”
I honestly do not get into Stein’s work, not yet anyway;
but that doesn’t make her work any less creative.
-
To mess with Elizabeth Barrett Browning by changing one word:
“How do I love thee? Let me create the ways.
Her famed sonnet is not made less thereby.
From my perspective, there is room for as many ways of working with words
as can be imagined. Each maker of poems finds her/his own comfort zone.
What else can one do? Each maker of poems learns from other makers
of poems and from anyone and any thing. I do agree that becoming too
attached to one’s own way of making is dangerous and ultimately pompous
like a tyrant king or tyrant president. Backing away from such a self-important
attitude is an honorable move, but ceasing to follow one’s own lights is not.
Perhaps Mr. Bernstein’s lights have phased to a new color. If they have,
then they have. I, like Whitman, like most humans, am likely to change
my view of something at any time. Positive inescapabilty. For years I
mistakenly spelled Rilke’s first name “Ranier” because I didn’t pay close
enough attention to what was entering my eyes, and because I liked
the sound of it.
Posted By: Brian Salchert on June 1, 2008 at 12:05 am
Can’t Mr. Goldsmith be allowed to make a good joke without people explaining that they don’t get it?
Posted By: Michael Robbins on June 1, 2008 at 7:37 pm
There goes the concept…!
Posted By: Don Share on June 1, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Charles Bernstein’s change of heart might very possibly be the result of a recent hunting accident in Colorado. Mr. Bernstein was out hiking with his Spokesperson, on the morning of April 31st, when a large male deer, very probably mistaking him for Dick Cheney, bowled him over with his left antler. Benrstein may have suffered a slight concussion. We wish him well (that is, “we” in the nominative-relative case).
Posted By: Henry Gould on June 2, 2008 at 9:06 am
I find it funny that those who took this seriously seemed to ignore the allusion to Duchamp and Kafka in the title. Clearly, mainstream, consumerist writers.
Posted By: Matthew Landis on June 2, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Is not Kafka mainstream, and Duchamp consumerist?
Posted By: Doodle on June 3, 2008 at 11:24 am
If he is joking or being ironic, and this is nonetheless some of the most sensible things ever uttered by him, then what does that say about his state of mind? One’s sanest moments shouldn’t come about through irony.
Posted By: Troy Camplin on June 4, 2008 at 9:04 am
Troy, are you even remotely familiar with the concept of opinion? Someone having different preferences from yours doesn’t make that person “insane”, it just makes him different. You seem to be troubled by difference.
Posted By: Matt on June 4, 2008 at 12:43 pm
They are, but that status was accorded them by the culture, not as a result of the nature of their own works. Certainly, Kafka wasn’t mainstream in his own lifetime, and Duchamp was still an important part of the 20th Century avant-garde. Then again, that might be part of the point…mainstream status doesn’t necessarily preclude experimental or novel approaches to poetry. But then, why would that be such a shocking revelation? While John Ashberry isn’t say, Billy Collins, you can walk into most Barnes and Nobles and at LEAST find a copy of his Selected Poems, he’s published by Penguin. I’ve even been finding Susan Howe increasingly more available in chain bookstores. It’s not as if Creeley or Ginsberg haven’t in some sense been embraced by the mainstream. I think people make too much out of which poets are mainstream or not and need to focus on the work that these poets do. Perhaps some are more intelligible than others, or are more amenable to inclusion within the favors of a mainstream literary culture, but the real question is, to me, is that writer writing with the intention of TRYING to be acceptable or consumerist and being rewarded for that tendency? It seems, at least from some of the above comments, that people assume that “If it’s not on a small press, a university press, or eminently un-readable, Charles Bernstein think sits crap.” Which is a far less nuanced and complex outlook than the perspective Charles Bernstein brings.
Posted By: Matthew Landis on June 8, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Screw all you guys. Now that I have your attention:
“I Get So Excited”
I get so excited. I puppy paper,
prance pony, dance delight.
I grant wishes, I romance, I caper,
I escape dark corners tight.
I freeze moment: quiet.
Examine fingers, toes.
Break, weep, rage, riot.
I ups I downs I rose.
I let lines go longer than form, bleed
Into margins, make believe.
Wish you well to hell, godspeed,
I must be to leave.
Posted By: Lawrence Bullock on December 18, 2008 at 4:25 pm

Kenneth Goldsmith