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Charles Bernstein

Charles Bernstein is Regan Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, and is the author of 22 books of poetry, including With Strings, Republics of Reality: 1975-1995, Content's Dream: Essays 1975, A Poetics, Shadowtime, and his most recent, Girly Man.

He was one of the foremost theorists of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E group; and his two collections of essays (Content's Dream: Essays 1975 and A Poetics) expand a position on poetry established on his close reading of the philosophy of Marx and Wittgenstein, and the writings of Gertrude Stein, Louis Zukofsky, William Carlos Williams and others.

Three short poems from Girly Man

Bridges Freeze Before Road

Starlit cliffs & then, all sudden,
when echo wanes &
crevice depopulates surface reason,
I go into the house of thick
green calling, overfed by oracle
crest and tendentious disclaimer.

Bridges freeze but remain passable
even in fog. The road goes nowhere

Fantasy on Nightmare on Elm Street Theme

There is a place
not here
nor near nor far

Goes and comes
wherever you are

Don’t go don’t go don’t go

(Written to the tune of composer Charles Bernstein’s theme for Nightmare on Elm Street)

and-if-then

And if then
then then
amounting to another.

Or is it
field you say
you hold to.