How does one introduce Charles Bernstein? Y’all tell me … he’s everything a poet should be. I’ll defer to his own webpage for his introduction.
From his Penn Arts and Sciences, Department of English website, where he is the Donald T. Regan Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature: Bernstein, who was born in 1950, grew up on the upper West Side of Manhattan and attended the Bronx High School of Science. He graduated from Harvard College, after which he worked for many years as a freelance medical/healthcare writer. From 1989 to 2003, he taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he was co-founder and Director of the Poetics Program and a SUNY Distinguished Professor. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and of the Roy Harvey Pearce/Archive for New Poetry Prize of the University of California, San Diego; for lifetime contribution to poetry and scholarship. In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2015 he was awared the Münster Prize for International Poetry and the Janus Pannnious Grand Prize for Poetry. In 2019, he received the Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, for lifetime achievement and Near/Miss.
Welcome to the Dead Mule, Mr. Bernstein. We’re damn pleased to have you here.
Affect Theory
sorry to be so sorry
sad to be so sad
distraught at my distress
melancholic on account of my melancholy
depressed to be depressed
anxious about my anxiety
happy to be happy
glad to be glad
disappointed by disappointment
amused to be amused
angry about anger
indifferent to indifference
despairing about despair
lost in my loss
buzzed to be buzzed
dumbfounded to be dumbfounded
hurt by the hurt
wounded by the wound
humiliated by the humiliation
paranoid about paranoia
miffed to be miffed
abject in objectification
unlucky to be unlucky
desiring desire
blankly blank
ashamed to be ashamed
ignorant of my ignorance
guilty feeling guilty
paralyzed by my paralysis
embarrassed by my embarrassment
silenced by my silence
enabled by my immobility
agitated by my agitation
ok being ok
mystified to be confused
inconsolable about being inconsolable
frightened by my fearfulness
encouraged by my timidity
for the 2020 class
Phi Beta Kappa of Eta
(Ohio Wesleyan University)
Before the Promise
I drew a blank on a torn door
Drew another, then no more
Got stung, pedaled frowns
Knew things was bust
(No way outta town)
Sometimes it done it its way
Then again, harder to say ––
What’s looking up
Decides to knock you down
Before the promise of tomorrow
Tomorrow came
Morning on this pole
Midnight at the other
Slipping, slapping, sliding
On a cockamamie roll
Yesterday’s dreams dissolve
Into today’s goodbyes
I set out on a camel’s hump
Came back with just the eyes
Before the promise of tomorrow
Tomorrow came
A farther distance that we go
Within each moment spent
Then ever’s sent by Heaven
Or scaled by human ken
Before the promise of tomorrow
Tomorrow came
We twist, we turn
Undo ourselves in tripled throws
My goodness, how the time has passed! ––
Let’s get our stuff and beat a path
To what we never knew
Nor will, nor who, nor say
Before the promise of tomorrow
Tomorrow came
The Darkness He Called Night
Virtue’s a kind
of despair,
masquerading as care.
A bitter
current is for
virtue sweet.
Sublime wine sours
its mouth.
Snakes eat from
its hands.
Jackasses obey its
whim. Self-
nomination papers its
path. Method
is its M.O.,
holding tight to
a higher
love and fervently
displayed empathies.
Virtue’s sword
is truth, in
love with
itself, at odds
with others.
Celebrating standards it
fashions, virtue
jams miscreants, shams
malcontents, shaming
those abjure improvement.
The passion
of virtue is
reprimand. Nothing
is more beautiful
to virtue
than compelling justice
and shattering
dissent: slashes in
a pan
that will never
absolve aesthetics.
