Skip to main content

Bernstein's Bailout

Charles Bernstein's recent intervention in the poetry markets makes sound poetic sense for uncertain poetic times.

Anyone wanting to further comprehend the current situation should then turn to the infamous 1941 essay on popular music, and replace "music" with "poetry", to see how Adorno's "official music culture" became Silliman's "official verse culture". Did popular poetry become standardized with pseudo-individualization?

Comments

i know bernie, from over here
when he came to Parnell square
was bernie in the head, all there

a prophetical language centric
mad-head who read reet well

well, well of Segias and Connla
took a book from Colum, house

red in the fort of shadows, ber-
nie ein nie chuck, searles

Charles for king and Hal slotting
Terry and june, moon, do away

herr jammers in the eff off house
SW gated, connected to herr poo a blic not fik is bernie of the NY

school, ronnie's mate, Mr Silly
man, we blew that night in the writers centre..

invited bernie out to Burdocks
for fish and chips, wiv his missus

first time in the pool of light
the black mountain guard, custodian

of the holy word from Zukofferz
intellectual be gob wuz blowing

me and bernie, at the altar of
a last minute job, five communicants, an audience of fawns

first time bernie - come chucker
come and meet yr biggest one

Desmond Swords - spun you one

made sure to mention Robert, Bob
the shepard, mister Sheppard

Todd -- UToo in the mob, fintan
bradán feasa in the boyhood deeds
of Fionn, knowledge, crane bags

ancient hags and the hawk of Achill
swirls above the sod -- Bernie

a market townland
is where the intellect was sharpened

a flat body of farmland
fringing Liverpool’s urban cloak
tinging the Lancashire twang

which can thicken immediately
the voice tweeked to make the speaker
sound like a like a spud-tame
lame brained div
trained from birth to be a fully labotamised
half cocked bog trotting dick head
or knob who sounds like a tit

gifted at carrot plucking and
swede, leek and beetroot munching
in mud covered rust bucket caravans

where dreams of getting bladdered
in the plough, the Shoe, the Lion,
the Queens or the Cricks
play on a loop until pay day
when the wages are blown
on ale and Ethel Austin wellies
worn in the rakish manner
of a hip Wigan pig shit shovellor
out on the piss.

But living in this linguistaically
liminal hinterland isn't all spuds
and dunderheads.
The liquid nature of the lingo
means scouse tones can also be
freely spouted
and the slow baked brain vacant
bleat of a sheep fiddling field lover
instantly switch to the city witted
jive talk of a street slick
trackie clad bling king giving it
the big one about buying a knock
of helicopter to go clubbing in
London with..

that was what Bernie heard Todd..

gra agus siochain, come to Limerick, 12 Nov, four provinces
eight contendors, an honorary
can ad i and add on, as they are talking of, over at the chaps..
Scott Keeney said…
I'm pretty sure Bakhtin came first with his term "official culture" which referred to poetic (monologic) culture as opposed to novelistic (dialogic) culture. I always assumed Bernstein was updating Bakhtin's critique to fit the situation of late twentieth century American poetry (primarily, though it may apply elsewhere).

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".