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Charles Bernstein

b. 1950
Photo of poet Charles Bernstein
Photo by Gezett/ullstein bild via Getty Images.

Poet, essayist, theorist, and scholar Charles Bernstein was born in New York City in 1950. He is a foundational member and leading practitioner of Language poetry.  Bernstein was educated at the Bronx High School of Science and at Harvard University, where he studied philosophy with Stanley Cavell and wrote his final thesis on Gertrude Stein and Ludwig Wittgenstein. In the mid-1970s Bernstein became active in the experimental poetry scenes in New York and San Francisco, not only as a poet, but also as an editor, publisher, and theorist. With visual artist and wife Susan Bee, Bernstein published several now well-known poets whose work is associated with Language writing. Between 1978-1981, with fellow poet Bruce Andrews, he published L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine, which became a forum for writing that blurred, confused, and denied the boundary between poetry and critical writing about poetry. Bernstein’s own poetic work explores the wide-ranging uses of language within diverse social contexts. His poetry combines the language of politics, popular culture, advertising, literary jargon, corporate-speak, and myriad others to show the ways in which language and culture are mutually constructive and interdependent. As Bernstein says in an interview with Bradford Senning: “I want to engage the materials of the culture, derange them as they have deranged me, sound them out, as they sound me out.” Bernstein’s writing is serious, engaging, and critical, while also being playful, irreverent and deeply humorous.

Since the 1970s Bernstein has published dozens of books, including poetry and essay collections, pamphlets, translations, collaborations, and libretti. His poetry has been widely anthologized and translated, and it has appeared in over 500 magazines and periodicals.

In addition to his work as a poet, Bernstein is a leading scholar and educator of poetry. From 1990 to 2003, he was David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters at the State University of New York at Buffalo and Director of the Poetics Program, which he co-founded with Robert Creeley. At SUNY Buffalo, he co-founded the Electronic Poetry Center with Loss Glazier (epc.buffalo.edu), and in 2002, he was appointed SUNY Distinguished Professor, the university’s highest rank. Bernstein is currently Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University Pennsylvania. With Al Filreis, he is the co-founder and co-editor of PENNsound (writing.upenn.edu/pennsound), an extensive archive of recorded poetry.

Bernstein was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2006. Other awards and honors include The 1999 Roy Harvy Pearce / Archive for New Poetry Prize of the University of California, San Diego; the University of Pennsylvania Dean’s Award for Innovative Teaching; a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship; and a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. 

Poems by Charles Bernstein
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Bibliography

 

WRITINGS:

POETRY

  • Asylums, Asylum's Press (New York City), 1975.
  • Parsing, Asylum's Press, 1976.
  • Shade, Sun & Moon (College Park, MD), 1978.
  • Poetic Justice, Pod Books (Baltimore, MD), 1979.
  • Senses of Responsibility, Tuumba Press (Berkeley, CA), 1979.
  • (With Bruce Andrews, Ray DiPalma, and others) Legend, Segue Books (New York City), 1980.
  • Controlling Interests, Roof Books (New York City), 1980.
  • Disfrutes, Potes and Poets Press (Elmwood, CT), 1981.
  • The Occurrence of Tune, Segue Books, 1981.
  • Stigma, Station Hill (Barrytown, NY), 1981.
  • Islets/ Irritations, Jordon Davies (New York City), 1983.
  • Resistance, Awede Press (Windsor, VT), 1983.
  • Veil, Xexoxial Editions (Madison, WI), 1987.
  • The Sophist, Sun & Moon, 1987.
  • Four Poems, Chax Press (Tucson, AZ), 1988.
  • Rough Trades, Sun & Moon, 1989.
  • Dark City, Sun & Moon, 1994.
  • The Subject, Meow Press (Buffalo, NY), 1995.
  • (With wife, Susan Bee) Log Rhythms, Granary Press (New York City), 1999.
  • Republics of Reality: 1975-1995, Sun & Moon, 2000.

OTHER

  • (Editor with Bruce Andrews) The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book, Southern Illinois University Press (Carbondale, IL), 1984.
  • (Translator) Claude Royet-Journoud, The Material Drape, Awede Press, 1984.
  • Content's Dream: Essays, 1975-1984, Sun & Moon, 1986, Northwestern University Press (Evanston, IL), 2001.
  • (Editor) The Politics of Poetic Form, Roof Books, 1989.
  • (Translator with Cadoit) Oliver Cadoit, Red, Green, and Black, Potes and Poets Press, 1990.
  • A Poetics (essays), Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1992.
  • (Editor) Live at the Ear, Elemenope Productions (Pittsburgh, PA), 1994.
  • (Editor) Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word, Oxford University Press (New York City), 1998.
  • My Way: Speeches and Poems, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1999.
  • With Strings, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2001.
  • (With David Antin) A Conversation with David Antin, Granary Books (New York, NY), 2002.

Work represented in numerous anthologies, including In the American Tree, edited by Ron Silliman, National Poetry Foundation (Orono, ME), 1986; New Directions 50: Anniversary Issue, edited by J. Laughlin and others, New Directions, 1986; American Poetry since 1970: Up Late, edited by Andrei Codrescu, Four Walls/Eight Windows, 1987; Language Poetries: An Anthology, edited by Douglas Messerli, New Directions, 1987; Out of This World, edited by Anne Waldman, Harmony, 1988; From the Other Side of the Century: A New American Poetry, 1960-1990, edited by Douglas Messerli, Sun & Moon, 1994; Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology, edited by Paul Hoover, Norton, 1994; Onward: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, edited by Peter Baker, Peter Lang Publishing, 1996; Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry, volume 2, edited by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris, University of California Press, 1998;From Artifice to Indeterminacy: An Anthology of New Poetics, edited by Christopher Beach, University of Alabama Press, 1998; The Norton Introduction to Poetry, edited by J. Paul Hunter, Norton, 1999. Coeditor of the series "Modern and Contemporary Poetics," University of Alabama Press (University, AL), 1998--. Author of the librettos, "Blind Witness News," "The Subject: A Psychiatric Opera," and "The Lenny Paschen Show," all composed by Ben Yarmolinsky; "Cafe Buffe," composed by Dean Drummond; and "Shadowtime," composed by Brian Ferneyhough. Works have been recorded on Class, Tapeworks from Widemouth Tapes; Guess Language, Audio Muzixa Qet, 1986; andLive at the Ear, Elemenope/Oracular Recordings, 1993. Contributor of poems and articles to more than two hundred periodicals in the United States, England, and Canada, including Diacritics, Review of Contemporary Fiction,Socialist Review, Harper's, Postmodern Culture, andAmerican Poetry Review. Coeditor, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, 1978-81; editor of special issue, Boundary 2, 1999.