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Disclaimers are necessary |
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By R.D. POHL "These statements are based on current expectations
and projections about the aesthetic environment and assumptions made by the
author and are not guarantees of future performativity," writes Charles
Bernstein in "Today's Not Opposite Day," a poem in his new
collection "With Strings" published this month by the University of
Chicago Press. "Actual events or performances may difference
materially from those expressed and projected in the poem due to factors such
as the effect of social changes in word meanings, material changes in social
conditions, changing conditions in the overall cultural environment,
continuing aesthetic turmoil, risks associated with product demand and market
acceptance, the impact of competing poems and poetry distribution systems,
delays in the development of new poems, imagination capacity utilization
(ICU), and genre mix and media absorption rates," he continues with
tongue firmly planted in cheek. "The author undertakes no obligation to
update any projective statements in this poem." Bernstein may not be the only contemporary poet to
incorporate disclaimers into his own work, but he is probably the only one to
paraphrase standard contract language to do so. As is usually the case with
his literary parodies, there is a serious point about language to be made:
not only are extravagant claims for the truthfulness of poetry skewered, but
Bernstein also points out how obtuse and nonreferential ordinary language
becomes when forced into a defensive, legalistic posture. Elsewhere in the
same poem, he rewrites the Gettysburg Address as a manifesto for language
poets. Bernstein, who holds the Gray Chair in Poetry and Letters
and directs the Poetics Program at the University at Buffalo, is the leading
advocate and public spokesperson for the language movement in contemporary
poetry. For much of the past quarter century, dating back to his days as
co-founder of the groundbreaking but short-lived literary journal L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E,
he has operated as a outspoken critic of what he calls the official verse
culture in the United States for its tacit acceptance of poetry as a
tradition bound self-marginalizing American art form. More recently, however, as lifelong avant-gardists such as
John Ashbery and Robert Creeley have won recognition as major figures in late
20th century American poetry, and leading mid-career figures such as Jorie
Graham seem more and more influenced by the experimental spirit of the
language movement, Bernstein's work has received a fairer reading in the
mainstream literary press. His last major collection, "Republics of
Reality: 1975-1995" was nominated for one of the literary world's most
respected awards, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, by the American Academy
of Poets and the Nation magazine. If certain elements in the literary establishment seem to
have warmed to Bernstein and the language movement considerably, it's not
because he has simplified his message. In his notes and acknowledgments to
"With Strings" he explains that the book is organized as a vortex,
with each poem furthering the momentum of the book while curving its arc of
attentional energy. The structure is modular: a short work might become part
of a serial poem or a section of a serial poem might stand on its own. The
effect is to make the book as a whole a string of interchanging parts.
Political, social, ethical, and textual investigations intermingle,
presenting a linguistic echo chamber in which themes, moods, and perceptions
are permuted, modulated, reverberated, and further extended. Perhaps the only sense in which Bernstein has made any
concessions to his expanding readership is in the foregrounding of wordplay,
punning, and the comedic elements of his work. While he has always acknowledged
his debt to Marx -- that's Groucho far more than Karl -- the literary high
jinks sometimes drive the narrative in ways that remind us of the dialogue of
playwrights Samuel Beckett and Tom Stoppard or the grammatical slapstick of
Abbott and Costello. "The shortest road from transcendence to immanence
is hilarity," he writes in "Ms. Otis Regrets." In the absence of any of Bernstein's genre-bending essays
in verse form, a staple of many of his recent volumes much of the focus in
"With Strings" appears to be on the function of grammar as a random
generator of meaning. "I've got a hang for langue, but no truck with/
Parole," he jokes in ruminative ablution making reference to linguist
Ferdinand de Saussures seminal distinction between language and speech. The
same poem closes with a knee-slapping rhyme: "What's sauce for the
gander / Is gravy for the geese -- if you cant buy / Redemption may I
recommend you lease?" |
