Charles Bernstein

Charles Bernstein

Christian & the plains

video portrait of Christian Bok

Christian Bök
I met up with Christian and Brigitte a few days earlier. We had met at the noisy lounge at his hotel on West 55th and walked over to the Mandarin Oriental lobby sky bar overlooking Central Park. But it was too dark to take any pictures. I saw Christian again at Kenny's on New Year's Day. Cheryl's studio was fairly quiet and the light was right.
January 1, 2008

July 15, 2011

Caroline Bergvall's "Meddle English"

with excerpt: new@Sybil

Bergvall in Stockholm

photo: ©Cecilia Gronberg: Weld Gallery OEI reading, May 10, 2011

Caroline Bergvall has emerged over the past decade as one of the most brilliantly inventive poets of our time. Bergvall's new book, Meddle English, is multilectical, conceptual, sprung lyric – let's just say pataque(e)rical  –  extravaganza.

At Sibyl, the English portal of Sibila, we've published Bergvall's own excerpt from the first piece in her new book, which I asked her to send my way as I was eager to have at least part of this work readily accesible on-line. Here are two crucial passages which are for me a kind of manifesto for writing in our time, for the kind of poetries I want: a poetry that doesn't accept English as a standard but as a site for meddling: a meddling that allows for the kind of transformation that is the foundation of exchange. Indeed, Bergvall's comments on voice strike me as getting to the heart of a central concern in the expanded field of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E: the aversion of "voice" in the pursuit of voices, voicings.

July 13, 2011

Attack launch (2011) & Sculpture Center reading (2010)

two videos


Laphroaig - Lagavulin - Margarita
Charles Bernstein and Josef Straub
Sunday, May 16, 2010, 3:00 PM
Sculpture Center, Queens
curated by Jay Sanders
excerpt from reading
for Emma, on her birthday: "In the Middle of the Way," "Be Drunken," "All the Whiskey in Heaven", followed by reading of Joseph Straub: YouTube: from Umbra "In the Middle of the Way," (Drummond), "Be Drunken" (Baudelaire); and"All the Whiskey in Heaven"


Attack of the Difficult Poems launch, A.I.R. Gallery, 6-11-11

July 5, 2011