Charles Bernstein - A Defence of Poetry

Hey,

We are doing that poem here at University. Does anybody have some info about? Best regards!

No, he's American, one of the most famous language poets.

CHARLES BERNSTEIN, A Defence of Poetry

My problem with deploying a term liek
nonelen
in these cases is acutually similar to
your
cirtique of the term ideopigical
unamlsing as a too-broad unanuajce
interprestive proacdeure.
You say too musch lie a steamroller when
we need dental (I;d say jeweller's)
tools.
(I thin youy misinterpret the natuer of
some of the political claims go; not
themaic
interpretationmn of evey
evey detail in every peim
but an oeitnetation towatd a kind of
texutal practice
that you prefer to call "nknsesne" but
for poltical purpses I prepfer to call
ideological!
, say Hupty Dumpty)
Taht is, nonesene see, msm to reduce a
vareity of fieefernt
prosdodic, thematic and discusrive
enactcemnts into a zeroo degree of
sense. What we have is a vareity of
valences. Nin-sene.sense is too binary
andoppostioin, too much oall or nithing
acccount with ninesense seeming by its
very meaing to equl no sense at all. We
have preshpas a blurrig of sense, whih
means not relying on convnetionally
methods of conveying sense but whih may
aloow for dar greater sense-smakihn than
specisi9usforms of doinat disoucrse that
makes no sense at all by irute of thier
hyperconventionality (Bush's speeches,
calssically. Indeed you say that
nonsense sheds leds on its “antithesis”
sense making: but teally the antithsisi
of these poems you call nonselnse is not
sense-making itself but perhps, in some
cases, the simulation of sense-making:
decitfullness, manifpultaion, the
media-ization of language, etc.
I don’t agree with Stewart that “the
more exptreme the disontinuitites . . . the
more nonsisincial”: I hear sense
beginning to made in this sinstances.
Te problem though is the definaitonof
sense. What you mean by nomsense is
soething like a-rational, but ration (and
this does back to Blake not to meanion
the pre-Socaratics) DOES NOT EQUAL
sense! This realtioes to the sort of
oscillation udnertood as rhythmic or
prosidci, that I disusccio in Artiofice.
Crucialy, the duck/rabitt exmaple is one
of the ambiguity of aspects and clearly
not a bprobelm of noneselnse: tjere are
two competing, completely sensible,
readings, not even any blurring; the
issue is context-depednece )otr
apsrevcyt blindness as Witegenstein
Nonesesen is too static. Deosnt’t
Prdunne even say int e eoem “sense occurs
“at the contre-coup:: in the process of
oscillatio itself.
b6y the waylines 9-10 are based on an
aphorism by Karl Kraus: the closer we
look at a word the greater the distance
from which it stares back.

Uh oh, he types like a 14 year old!

But seriously, assuming it's intentional, this is kind of cool. The last line is smashing. You think there's a reason for why the ending is free of mistakes, apart from the rest of the poem? I would guess that it helps focus and center the whole piece, clarifying what came before it - showcasing the strange, adaptable nature of language. Perhaps.

What do you think is the message of the poem?

Structure: We can say that it is written in free blank verse.

Would somebody like to interpret the poem a little bit?

What's the structure?
What's the message of the poem?
Poetic Devices ?

So is it a critic on society?

The basic argument of Bernstein is that there is meaning in nonsense - but what does that mean ?!

The poet is being ironic, which is something that many writers aim to achieve, but few master. He is being ironic by being a smartass about the smartasses of the world- those who know and write big things about little things and little things about big things. The poem shows, through its purposeful lack of any formed structure or rhythm or grammar, how many poems/articles/etc can appear to many people- they can seem offensively unattractive, and more than that, they can seem like meaningless drivel. The joke lies in the fact that people still try to find some real meaning in all the nonsense, instead of the (non)sense in the real meaning. His truth lies in the few sections of the poem that are spelt clearly, and it is highlighted by the sections that are not.

"A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men." Dahl

Leave it to abby to be the succinctly lucid one.