Charles Bernstein

Douglas Messerli on Richard Foreman's new play Old Fashioned Prostitutes (A True Romance)

The Unfortunate Truth of My Situation

Richard Foreman Old-Fashioned Prostitutes (A True Romance)

The Public Theater, New York, the performance I attended was on Saturday, May 4, 2013.

After years and years of enigmatic and provocative plays, and after having announced that he was giving up playwriting for filmmaking, Richard Foreman has come back with a new play that at times almost appears to be a kind of film script, Old-Fashioned Prostitutes (A True Romance). Like most of his works, this play is set upon a stage decked out with numerous alphabetical configurations, portraits of “significant” people, numerous odd props, and the strings that outline the horizontal shell of the stage, a kind of mix between a metaphorical representation of string theory and an eruv, the defining territory of the traditional Jewish community that outlines the boundaries through which certain objects can be moved or carried on holy days.

Gertrude Stein and the Marshal

Our Stein dossier on the war years has two new pieces: a detailed study by Vaclav Paris of Stein's aborted translations of Pétain, which ended about the time the FDR administration broke relations with Vichy, and a thoughtful response to the article by noted Stein scholar Leon Katz.

Bones Will Crow: Burmese poets Zeyar Lynn & Khin Aung Aye on Close Listening

Close Listening, with Zeyar Lynn, Khin Aung Aye, and James Byrne:

Zeyar Lynn poems:

"My History Is Not Mine": MP3
"Slightly Lopsided but a More Accurate Portrait": MP3
"Big Sister Have You Been to Laiza": MP3

Zeyar Lynn in conversation with Charles Bernstein
(37:35):  MP3


Khin Aung Aye  and James Byrne in conversation with Charles Bernstein:
(53:05): MP3

Weak Links: Introduction to Hannah Weiner's WEEKS

First edition  of Weeks published by Xexoxial Editions in 1990, with photos by Barbara Rosenthal, and my introducton.

Full text from Xexoxial