Electric Gurlesque, like the first edition of the anthology, is centered on an idea of the Gurlesque as a feminist aesthetic that emerges most prominently in American women’s poetry at the turn of the 21st century. The braided strands of the Gurlesque — which the subtitle of the first edition identified as “grrly,” “grotesque,” and “burlesque”— come together to form one complex aesthetic strategy, and also suggest the diverse avenues of inquiry pursued by the essayists in this section.
The following is the Preface to the Essays from the new anthology Electric Gurlesque published by Saturnalia Books in 2024. The complete anthology can be found here.
Nina Zivancevic's 1983 interview with Charles Bernstein and Douglas Messerli, with a new postscript by Messerli
audio and text
This interview was first publlished in the Belgrade literary magazine, Knjizevnost, and in Sagetrieb's Winter 1984 issue (Vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 63-78).
The undedited audio of the original interview, from November 5, 1983, is avaialbe on PennSound:
(2 hrs, 18min): MP3