A Blog Post on ...

A Blog Post on Charles Bernstein

 

I enjoyed the reading of “Johnny Cake Hollow,” although I didn’t really understand the title. The body of the poem reminded me of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.” Both poems are best read aloud on account of their rich sounds. “Johnny Cake Hollow” is more impressionistic than “Jabberwocky.” In the “Jabberwocky,” the speaker is a parent addressing a son. “Johnny Cake Hollow” doesn’t have a clearly defined speaker, but the hollow has all the sound effects of Carroll’s “wabe” and “borogoves.” Here is a bit for our memories:

 

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

  And the mome raths outgrabe.

 

Carroll invents neologisms that effectively take the place of English words. “Brillig,” for example, could be a substitution for “bright,” and “slithy toves” for “slimy toads,” such that the first line would read “’Twas bright, and the slimy toads…” Boring. Kids listening to Carroll tell the story would rather hear nonsense—it’s just more fun. It’s not “academic” poetry, but who cares? Bernstein, on the other hand, invents some new words as far as I can tell, but their place in the poem never feels like a one-to-one substitution for known words. To hear him read (and I note this poem is also read by Bernstein on www.youtube.com) is to hear poetry. I can’t say the same for “Lift Off,” which is well-conceived but sounds terrible.

 

In “Close Listening,” Bernstein says, “During the past forty years, more and more poets have used forms whose sound patterns are made up – that is, their poems do not follow received or prefabricated forms.  It is for these poets that the poetry reading has taken on so much significance.” I think he’s speaking of poems like “Johnny Cake Hollow,” where the sound is the material that constructs the poem, rather than the semantic properties of words.

 

One of the goals of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, as I think Bernstein would claim, is for the words to create the meaning, and not the other way around. I guess that’s what I tried to do in the last three paragraphs. I agree with Brian Brodeur when he says it’s hard to make meaning out of it. Bernstein speaks of John Cage in “Close Listening,” and I can’t help but think of Marcel Duchamp’s urinal. I saw it in Cincinnati a couple years ago, and it is just a toilet. But when it’s in an art museum, it’s not just a toilet. Like a lot of Bernstein’s poetry, I only wanted to see the damn thing once, but I keep thinking about it (and other avant garde art) wherever I go. For example, in the larger men’s restroom in the basement of McMicken, there is a wall of urinals that look almost exactly the same as Duchamp’s. To appreciate this fact during a mundane act elevates the experience to art, creating new meaning for me.

 

In conceptual poetry, Bernstein is a key player. This will be a short paragraph. See—I’m already starting to be more conscious of the language I use and how I use it.

 

Humor aside though, I also enjoyed the pennsound website, which I am glad to know. The recordings are excellent, and most of them can’t be found elsewhere—except for youtube and other websites. I applaud any efforts by institutions to make information free and indexable. I wish more libraries would contribute to this effort and start indexing and storing recordings. It would be great to search Summon for a keynote at a conference, let’s say, and have a link to the recording as well as the text. Again, “Made Not Only in Words” by Kathleen Blake Yancey—from our TCW reader last year—comes to mind. The text doesn’t give the experience that conference-goers had.

 

Bernstein’s “Electronic Pies in the Poetry Skies” feels dated, much like the rest of his work. I suppose his work ages quickly in the same way Lisa Nakamura’s work does; by the time it’s published, it’s already old hat. Yet Nakamura stated that she is working toward identifying and establishing the theory of what she studies, which is exactly what Bernstein did and continues to do.

 

Because I don’t know how to end a blog post (I have only started using the genre last year), I will end with my favorite poem/lecture? of Bernstein’s:

 

A Test of Poetry

By Charles Bernstein

What do you mean by rashes of ash? Is industry

systematic work, assiduous activity, or ownership

of factories? Is ripple agitate lightly? Are

we tossed in tune when we write poems? And

what or who emboss with gloss insignias of air?

 

Is the Fabric about which you write in the epigraph

of your poem an edifice, a symbol of heaven?

 

Does freight refer to cargo of lading carried

for pay by water, land or air? Or does it mean

payment for such transportation? Or a freight

train? When you say a commoded journey,

do you mean a comfortable journey or a good train

with well-equipped commodoties? But, then, why

do you drop the ‘a’ before slumberous friend? And

when you write, in “Why I Am Not a Christian”

You always throw it down / But you never

pick it up—what is it??

 

In “The Harbor of Illusion”, does vein

refer to a person’s vein under his skin or

is it a metaphor for a river? Does lot

mean one’s fate or a piece of land?

And does camphor refer to camphor trees?

Moreover, who or what is nearing. Who or

what has fell?   Or does fell refer to the

skin or hide of an animal? And who or what has  

stalled? Then, is the thoroughfare of

noon’s atoll an equivalent of the template?

 

In “Fear of Flipping” does flipping mean

crazy?

 

How about strain, does it mean

a severe trying or wearing pressure or

effect (such as a strain of hard work),

or a passage, as in piece of music?

Does Mercury refer to a brand of oil?

 

In the lines

shards of bucolic pastry anchored

against cactus cabinets, Nantucket buckets

could we take it as—pieces of pies

or tarts are placed in buckets (which

are made of wood from Nantucket)

anchored against cabinets (small

rooms or furniture?) with cactus?

 

What is nutflack?

 

I suppose the caucus of caucasians

refers to the white people’s meeting

of a political party to nominate candidates.

But who is Uncle Hodgepodge?

And what does familiar freight

to the returning antelope mean?

 

You write, the walls are our floors.

How can the walls be floors if the floors

refer to the part of the room which forms

its enclosing surface and upon which one

walks? In and the floors, like balls,

repel all falls—does balls refer to

nonsense or to any ball like a basket ball

or to guys? Or to a social assembly for

dancing? Falls means to descend

from higher to a lower

or to drop down wounded or dead?

But what is the so-called overall

mesh?

 

Is the garbage heap the garbage heap

in the ordinary sense? Why does

garbage heap exchange for so-called

overall mesh? Since a faker is

one who fakes, how can

arbitrary reduce to faker?

 

Who or what are disappointed

not to have been?

 

Does frames refer to form, constitution,

or structure in general? Or to a

particular state, as of the mind?

 

In the sentence,

If you don’t like it

colored in, you can always xerox it

and see it all gray

–what is it? What does

colored in mean?

 

A few lines later you write,

You mean, image farm when you’ve got bratwurst—

Does bratwurst refer to sausage?

Does the line mean—the sausage

you saw reminded you of a farm which you imagined?

 

Does fat-bottom boats refer to boats with thick bottoms?

Is humble then humped used to describe the actions of one

who plays golf? In the phrase a sideshow freak—

the freak refers to a hippie? Sideshow refers to secondary

importance? Or an abnormal actor in the sideshow?

Then, who or what is linked with steam of pink. And

how about the tongue-tied tightrope stalker—

does the stalker refer to one who is pursuing

stealthily in the act of hunting game? The stalker

is a witness at first and then a witless witness?

 

You write The husks are salted:

what kind of nut husks can be salted for eating?

What does bending mean—to become curved,

crooked, or bent? Or to bow down in submission

or reverence, yield, submit? Does bells

refer to metallic sounding instruments or

a kind of trousers?

 

Just a few lines later you have the phrase

Felt very poured. Who felt poured? Toys?

Is humming in the sense of humming a song?

Stepped into where? Not being part of what?

 

In “No Pastrami” (Walt! I’m with you in Sydney / Where

the echoes of Mamaroneck howl / Down the outback’s

pixilating corridors)—does the pastrami refer

to a highly seasoned shoulder cut of beef? Is

Mamaroneck a place in the U.S. where wild oxes howl?

I take it corridors refers to the passageway

in the supermarket? Could I read the poem as—

The speaker is doing shopping in a supermarket

in Sydney; he is walking along the eccentric  

passageways among the shelves on which goods

are placed; he does not want to buy the pastrami

as he seems to have heard the echoes of wild oxes

howling in the U.S. while he addresses Walt Whitman?

 

In “No End to Envy”, does the envy refer to admire or

in the bad sense?