My Way: Speeches and Poems

"Verse is born free but everywhere in chains. It has been my project to rattle the chains." (from "The Revenge of the Poet-Critic") In My Way, (in)famous language poet and critic Charles Bernstein deploys a wide variety of interlinked forms—speeches and poems, interviews and essays—to explore the place of poetry in American culture and in the university. Sometimes comic, sometimes dark, Bernstein's writing is irreverent but always relevant, "not structurally challenged, but structurally challenging." Addressing many interrelated issues, Bernstein moves from the role of the public intellectual to the poetics of scholarly prose, from vernacular modernism to idiosyncratic postmodernism, from identity politics to the resurgence of the aesthetic, from cultural studies to poetry as a performance art, from the small press movement to the Web. Along the way he provides "close listening" to such poets as Charles Reznikoff, Laura Riding, Susan Howe, Ezra Pound, Allen Ginsberg, and Gertrude Stein, as well as a fresh perspective on L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, the magazine he coedited that became a fulcrum for a new wave of North American writing. In his passionate defense of an activist, innovative poetry, Bernstein never departs from the culturally engaged, linguistically complex, yet often very funny writing that has characterized his unique approach to poetry for over twenty years. Offering some of his most daring work yet—essays in poetic lines, prose with poetic motifs, interviews miming speech, speeches veering into song—Charles Bernstein's My Way illuminates the newest developments in contemporary poetry with its own contributions to them. "The result of [Bernstein's] provocative groping is more stimulating than many books of either poetry or criticism have been in recent years."—Molly McQuade, Washington Post Book World "This book, for all of its centrifugal activity, is a singular yet globally relevant perspective on the literary arts and their institutions, offered in good faith, yet cranky and poignant enough to not be easily ignored."—Publishers Weekly "Bernstein has emerged as postmodern poetry's sous-chef of insouciance. My Way is another of his rich concoctions, fortified with intellect and seasoned with laughter."—Timothy Gray, American Literature

Table of Contents:
Preface A Defense of Poetry The Revenge of the Poet-Critic, or The Parts Are Greater Than the Sum of the Whole Thelonious Monk and the Performance of Poetry An Interview with Manuel Brito Solidarity Is the Name We Give to What We Cannot Hold What's Art Got to Do with It?: The Status of the Subject of the Humanities in an Age of Cultural Studies A Test of Poetry The Book as Architecture Dear Mr. Fanelli An Interview with Hannah Mockel-Rieke I Don't Take Voice Mail: The Object of Art in the Age of Electronic Technology Weak Links (on Hannah Weiner) Claire-in-the-Building Again Eigner Frame Lock "Passed by Examination": Paragraphs for Susan Howe The Value of Sulfur Shaker Show Gertrude and Ludwig's Bogus Adventure Introjective Verse Poetics of the Americas Unzip Bleed Lachrymose Encaustic / Abrasive Tear Stein's Identity Provisional Institutions: Alternative Presses and Poetic Innovation Pound and the Poetry of Today Inappropriate Touching Robin on His Own (on Robin Blaser) Water Images of The New Yorker The Response as Such: Words in Visibility From an Ongoing Interview with Tom Beckett Explicit Version Number Required Hinge Picture (on George Oppen) Reznikoff's Nearness An Autobiographical Interview Beyond Emaciation Riding's Reason Whose He Kidding Unrepresentative Verse (on Ginsberg and Eliot) Poetry and [Male?] Sex Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word Taps [In memoriam Eric Mottram] Warning - Poetry Area: Publics under Construction The Republic of Reality Notes and Acknowledgments

About the Author :
Charles Bernstein, winner of the 2019 Bollingen Prize, is the Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of many books, most recently two volumes of poetry, Near/Miss and Topsy-Turvy, also published by the University of Chicago Press. He is the winner of the 2025 America Award of the Contemporary Arts Educational Project, for a lifetime contribution to international writing.