Charles Bernstein

Re- demption comes & redemp- tion goes but trans- ience is here for- ever.

What do you mean by rashes of ash? Is industry systematic work, assiduous activity, or ownership of factories? Is ripple agitate lightly? Are we tossed in tune when we write poems? And what or who emboss with gloss insignias of air? Is the Fabric about which you write in the epigraph of your poem an edifice, a symbol of heaven? Does freight refer to cargo of lading carried for pay by water, land or air? Or does it mean payment for such transportation? Or a freight train? When you say a commoded journey, do you mean a comfortable journey or a good train with well-equipped commodoties? But, then, why do you drop the ‘a’ before slumberous friend? And when you write, in “Why I Am Not a Christian” You always throw it down / But you never pick it up

Home team suffers string of losses.—Time to change loyalties. Quadruple bypass.—Hold the bacon on that next cheeseburger. Poems tanking.—After stormiest days, sun comes out from behind clouds, or used to. Marriage on rocks.—Nothing like Coke. Election going the wrong direction.—Kick off slippers, take deep breathe,be here now. Boss says your performance needs boost.—A long hot bath smoothes wrinkles. War toll tops 100,000.—Get your mind off it, switch to reality TV. Lake Tang Woo Chin Chicken with Lobster and Sweet Clam Sauce still not served and everyone else got their orders twenty minutes back.—Savor the water, feast on the company. Subway floods and late for audition.—Start being the author of your own performance. Take a walk. Slip on ice, break arm.—In moments like this, the preciousness of life reveals itself. Wages down in non-union shop.—You’re a sales associate, not a worker; so proud to be part of the company. Miss the train?—Great chance to explore the station! Suicide bombers wrecks neighborhood.—Time to pitch in! Nothing doing.—Take a break! Partner in life finds another partner.—Now you can begin the journey of life anew. Bald?—Finally, you can touch the sky with the top of your head. Short-term recall shot.—Old memories are sweetest. Hard drive crashes and novel not backed up.—Nothing like a fresh start. Severe stomach cramps all morning.—Boy are these back issues of Field and Stream engrossing. Hurricane crushes house.—You never seemed so resilient. Brother-in-law completes second year in coma.—He seems so much more relaxed than he used to. $75 ticket for Sunday meter violation on an empty street in residential neighborhood.—The city needs the money to make us safe and educate our kids. Missed last episode of favorite murder mystery because you misprogrammed VCR.—Write your own ending! Blue cashmere pullover has three big moth holes.—What a great looking shirt! Son joins skinhead brigade of Jews for Jesus.—At least he’s following his bliss. Your new play receives scathing reviews and closes after a single night.—What a glorious performance! Pungent stench of homeless man on subway, asking for food.—Such kindness in his eyes, as I turn toward home. Retirement savings lost on Enron and WorldCom.—They almost rhyme. Oil spill kills seals.—The workings of the Lord are inscrutable. Global warming swamps land masses.—Learn to accept change. Bike going fast in wrong direction knocks you over.—A few weeks off your feet, just what the doctor ordered. AIDS ravaging Africa.—Wasn’t Jeffrey Wright fabulous in Angels in America? Muffler shot.—There’s this great pizza place next to the shop. Income gap becomes crater.—Good motivation to get rich. Abu Ghraib prisoners tortured.—Let’s face it, shit happens. Oscar wins Emmy.—Award shows are da bomb. FBI checking your library check-outs.—I also recommend books on Amazon. Gay marriages annulled.—Who needs the state to sanctify our love? President’s lies kill GIs.—He’s so decisive about his core values. Self-Help.—Other drowns.

I ruin my hats and all the mat slides glad I hop my girls and all is skip again I jump I run you up inside my truck The car goes looping out in dark and light And yellow hat slides in I run my mats and all the girl slides glad I hoped you skipped me into luck And jump me black, ruin me glad I jump I run you up inside my truck I jump my slopes and all the dopes slide glad I glide my luck and all is slip again I jump my hopes and all the rope glides sad I skip you jump the way you said But I run old and sigh your name I ruin my mats and all the girl slides glad At least when luck hops it skips back again A rune my mats and all the girls slide glad I jump I run you up inside my truck After "Mad Girl's Love Song" by Sylvia Plath

Directions: For each pair of sentences, circle the letter, a or b, that best expresses your viewpoint. Make a selection from each pair. Do not omit any items. 1.a) The body and the material things of the world are the key to any knowledge we can possess. b) Knowledge is only possible by means of the mind or psyche. 2.a) My life is largely controlled by luck and chance. b) I can determine the basic course of my life. 3.a) Nature is indifferent to human needs. b) Nature has some purpose, even if obscure. 4.a) I can understand the world to a sufficient extent. b) The world is basically baffling. 5.a) Love is the greatest happiness. b) Love is illusionary and its pleasures transient. 6.a) Political and social action can improve the state of the world. b) Political and social action are fundamentally futile. 7.a) I cannot fully express my most private feelings. b) I have no feelings I cannot fully express. 8.a) Virtue is its own reward. b) Virtue is not a matter of rewards. 9.a) It is possible to tell if someone is trustworthy. b) People turn on you in unpredictable ways. 10.a) Ideally, it would be most desirable to live in a rural area. b) Ideally, it would be most desirable to live in an urban area. 11.a) Economic and social inequality is the greatest social evil. b) Totalitarianism is the greatest social evil. 12.a) Overall, technology has been beneficial to human beings. b) Overall, technology has been harmful to human beings. 13.a) Work is the potential source of the greatest human fulfillment. b) Liberation from work should be the goal of any movement for social improvement. 14.a) Art is at heart political in that it can change our perception of reality. b) Art is at heart not political because it can change only consciousness and not events.

The rich men, they know about suffering That comes from natural things, the fate that Rich men say they can't control, the swell of The tides, the erosion of polar caps And the eruption of a terrible Greed among those who cease to be content With what they lack when faced with wealth they are Too ignorant to understand. Such wealth Is the price of progress. The fishmonger Sees the dread on the faces of the trout And mackerel laid out at the market Stall on quickly melting ice. In Pompeii The lava flowed and buried the people So poems such as this could be born.

[facsimile] He awoke, fully charged. You can bring water to a horse but you can’t make it ride. All poetry is conceptual but some is more conceptual than others. Ambient difficulty leads to poetic license. Poetry has no purpose & that is not its pur- pose. You have to get over be- in- g over. April is the cruelest month for poetry. And May is not much better, is it? Why write in prose what you could write as easily as poetry? The poem is a crutch that allows us to think with and throu- g- h it. Every poem must have 13 distinct frames, devices, motifs, styles, forms, or concepts. Poetry emasculates prose. The body: can’t live with it, can’t live without i- t. I want to be understood, just not by you. Last week’s weather is worth a pound of salt, just like the lot of  wives or the snowy pillars of  Danton. There’s not a crowd in the sky. Familiarity breeds content. Yesterday’s weather is as beyond reach as tomorrow’s dreams. The move away from close reading often got drowned in the bathwater, even if   we could never find the baby. I wouldn’t  join a poetic tradition that would recognize me as a member. The wheel needs to be reinvented because we’re still stuck. I am for almost new art (gently used forms) — easier on the pocketbook and on the b- rain (undergarments not accepted). The only true innovation is God’s. Others pay cash. This is a lie and that’s the truth. Better truth in the shade than a lie in the sun. The taste of madeleine ain’t what it used to be. (taint what it used to be) ... all alone and feeling ... Operators are on duty. Call now. As dry as a bubble, as expectant as the dead of night. Without product placement, poetry as we know it cannot sur- vive. Poetry should not be in the service of art any more than religion, ideology, or morality. Poetry should be in the service of nothing — and not even that. If  you can identify someone as gnostic they are probably not gnostic enough, for my money. I believe in my disbelief, have faith in my reason. The sacred in a poem is nowhere seen and everywhere felt. There’s more to transgression than ritual, but not enough more. There is more to liturgy than doctrine, once in a blue m- oo- n. I left my purpose in my other pants. You’re not the only paddle in the ocean, shadow in the dark, line in the poem, lobster in the trap, pot on the stove, wheel on the truck, letter on the keypad, scythe in the field, lever on the controls, cloud in the sky, fruit in the tree, rat in the lab. Reality is usually a poor copy of the imitation. The original is an echo of what is yet to be. Time is neither linear nor circular; it is excremental. Beauty is the memory of the loss of time. Memory is the reflection of the loss of beauty. American poetry suffers from its lack of uncreativity. I have no faith in faith, or hope for hope, no belief  in belief, no doubt of doubt. They say God is in the details. That’s because the Devil has the rest covered. God is weak and imaginary — a flickering possibility. The dogma of an omniscient and omnipotent God maligns hope and denies the sacred, as it turns its back on the world. God has no doctrine, no morality, no responsibility. To sin against God is to use that name to justify any action or prohibition, whether murder or martyrdom. I’ve got authenticity, you’ve got dogma  ...    proclaimeth the Lord. Saying one more time: It’s true but I don’t believe it I believe it but it’s not so. “My logic is all in the melting pot.” [wittgenstein] Better an old cow than a dead horse. Alzheimer’s: What’s that again? So it turns out I’m not a bull in a china shop but china in a bulls’ shop. Sometimes a penis is just a s- y- m- b- ol. In their gloom, the Jews go and come Talking of Bergen-Belsen. (I saw time but it didn’t return my gaze.) My heart is like a water bucket that returns from the river seven times full eighth empty. Zeno and Heraklitus are my father’s milk. I think with the poem not thr- ou- g- h it. Turns of phrase / my stock in trade. Negative capability: sure. But also positive incapacity. I always hear echoes and reverses when I am listening to language. It’s the field of my consciousness. When we stop making — manufacturing, imposing — sense then we have a chance to find it. A professional poet throws nothing out except the eggshells and the coffee grounds. I think the idea is to be unoriginal but in as original a way a- s possible. Poets are the Pershings of the imaginary: piercing themselves as they perish in spite of native ground. I wish I was still in my pajamas. The unironized life is not worth living. When people tell that joke, three Jews four opinions, what they don’t say is that two of them, the schmucks, have the same opinion, while the third ... Ouzo something to me and it ain’t pretty. Absinthe makes the heart gro- w foreigner. “Throughout this prospectus, ‘object’ refers to the digitized file.” Yesterday is a stone’s throw from tomorrow & each new year a vast canvas of impossibility. Kalip in North Folk, you’re on the air. Stand clear of the clo- sing doors. • Too much is still not enough. • Blameless as a sheep at slaughter, am I Guileless as the toll of tidal tug There are no absolutes except this. It was a veritable bow across the shot. “Sacred means saturated with being.” [berssenbrugge] So does scared. So does scarred.

Not long ago, or maybe I dreamt it Or made it up, or have suddenly lost Track of its train in the hocus pocus Of the dissolving days; no, if I bend The turn around the corner, come at it From all three sides at once, or bounce the ball Against all manner of bleary-eyed fortune Tellers—well, you can see for yourselves there’s Nothing up my sleeves, or notice even Rocks occasionally break if enough Pressure is applied. As far as you go In one direction, all the further you’ll Have to go on before the way back has Become totally indivisible.

for Gabriele Mintz As Billy goes higher all the balloons Get marooned on the other side of the Lunar landscape. The module’s broke— It seems like for an eternity, but who’s Counting—and Sally’s joined the Moonies So we don’t see so much of her anyhow. Notorious novelty—I’d settle for a good Cup of Chase & Sand-borne—though when The strings are broken on the guitar You can always use it as a coffee table. Vienna was cold at that time of year. The sachertorte tasted sweet but the memory burned in the colon. Get a grip, get a grip, before The Grippe gets you. Glad to see the picture Of ink—the pitcher that pours before Throwing the Ball, with never a catcher in sight. Never a catcher but sometimes a catch, or A clinch or a clutch or a spoon—never a Catcher but plenty o’flack, ’till we meet On this side of the tune.

I saw your picture in the 79th street station. You said you’d be interested in any comments I might have on the condition of the station Mr. Fanelli, there is a lot of debris in the 79th street station that makes it unpleasant to wait in for more than a few minutes. The station could use a paint job and maybe new speakers so you could understand the delay announcements that are always being broadcast. Mr. Fanelli—there are a lot of people sleeping in the 79th street station & it makes me sad to think they have no home to go to. Mr. Fanelli, do you think you could find a more comfortable place for them to rest? It’s pretty noisy in the subway, especially all those express trains hurtling through every few minutes, anyway when the trains are in service. I have to admit, Mr. Fanelli, I think the 79th street station’s in pretty bad shape & sometimes at night as I toss in my bed I think the world’s not doing too good either, & I wonder what’s going to happen, where we’re headed, if we’re headed anywhere, if we even have heads. Mr. Fanelli, do you think if we could just start with the 79th street station & do what we could with that then maybe we could, you know, I guess, move on from there? Mr. Fanelli, when I saw your picture & the sign asking for suggestions I thought, if you really wanted to get to the bottom of what’s wrong then maybe it was my job to write to you: Maybe you’ve never been inside the 79th street station because you’re so busy managing the 72nd street & 66th street stations, maybe you don’t know the problems we have at 79th—I mean the dirt & frequent delays & the feeling of total misery that pervades the place. Mr. Fanelli, are you reading this far in the letter or do you get so many letters every day that you don’t have time to give each one the close attention it desires? Or am I the only person who’s taken up your invitation to get in touch & you just don’t have enough experience to know how to respond? I’m sorry I can’t get your attention Mr. Fanelli because I really believe if you ask for comments then you ought to be willing to act on them—even if ought is too big a word to throw around at this point. Mr. Fanelli I hope you won’t think I’m rude if I ask you a personal question. Do you get out of the office much? Do you go to the movies or do you prefer sports—or maybe quiet evenings at a local restaurant? Do you read much, Mr. Fanelli? I don’t mean just Gibbons and like that, but philosophy— have you read much Hanna Arendt or do you prefer a more ideological perspective? I think if I understood where you are coming from, Mr. Fanelli, I could write to you more cogently, more persuasively. Mr. Fanelli, do you get out of the city at all—I mean like up to Bear Mountain or out to Montauk? I mean do you notice how unpleasant the air is in the 79th street station—that we could use some cooling or air-filtering system down there? Mr. Fanelli, do you think it’s possible we could get together and talk about these things in person? There are a few other points I’d like to go over with you if I could get the chance. Things I’d like to talk to you about but that I’d be reluctant to put down on paper. Mr. Fanelli, I haven’t been feeling very good lately and I thought meeting with you face to face might change my mood, might put me into a new frame of mind. Maybe we could have lunch? Or maybe after work? Think about it, Mr. Fanelli.