Charles Bernstein

Poetics List (1993-2014)

I started the Poetics List in late 1993, just after I came to Buffalo and co-founded the Poetics Program and a little while before the founding of the Electronic Poetry Center. When the list began, a email-based discussion group was a radically new format. There was no web interface and no way to filter messages. Emails were read and written via on-line ascii systems. During the first six years of the list, a deep and wide ranging discussion developed among the few hundred of us actively participating. I asked that the list address not be publicized so that we could keep the discussion to those with shared interests and that the list not become a general interest poetry forum. Much of the spirit of the early list was captured by Joel Kuszai, who edited Poetics@, for which I wrote the introduction. This ROOF book is available free in as epubmobi, or pdf; or via Amazon.

Native American 21st century poetry books

as of 2014

Poetry Volumes of the Twenty-First Century by Native American / American Indian / Indigenous / Tribal heritage poets of the U.S. and U.S. occupied Pacific / Hawaii 
compiled by the Indigenous Caucus of AWP
Jennifer Foerster, Organizer; Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, founding organizer; Sherwin Bitsui, 2013 Chair: Craig Santos Perez, 2014 Chair; Brandy Nalani McDougall, original panel/caucus member; Travis Hedge Coke, assistant

Excluding reprints with exception of selected/collected editions, excluding vanity/self-publishing platforms or platforms whereas poet is publisher
95 poets
(mixed genre books and/or significant chapbook publications  included and noted within listings)

If you wish to submit a text for possible inclusion please contact the AWP Indigenous Caucus organizer. Please, also, cite the AWP Indigenous Caucus when referring to this bibliography.

This list is vetted and is not intended for general public amendments.


Bobbie Louise Hawkins: Home movies of Robert Creeley and company

Olson, Creeley, Wieners

Bobbie Louise Hawkins took these home movies from 1962 to 1965. She provided them to Robert McTavish for his film about the Vancouver poetry conference of 1963, The Line Has Shattered (2013), and then asked McTavish to send them to PennSound.  Penelope Creeley and McTavish provided most of the annotations. We welcome any further identifications: let us know! 

Charles Reznikoff's "Amelia": A case study by Richard Hyland

Richard Hyland, Distinguished Professor, Rutgers Law School, Camden, New Jersey, has compiled the fullest account of the sources of a Charles Reznikoff poem, together with a detailed commentary on the Amelia Kirwan case and the poem Reznikoff wrote based on this case. Many of Reznikoff's poems, especially those in Testimony, are based on legal records. But there has been little research on the exact relationship between the legal record and the poem, with the general assumption that Reznikoff used only language from the legal records, cutting away but not adding any of his own words. The key to Reznikoff's aesthetic is his selection and condensation of the source materials. 

Surely Reznikoff is a paradigmatic poet for all documentary and source-based poetry of the 20th century and exemplary for many of us who use appropriated or found material in our work.

Madeline Gins (1941-2014)

Madeline Gins, a poet, architect, and long-time collaborator with artist Arakawa, died this morning. She was 72. The cause of death was cancer.