Inhoudsopgave:
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Praised in recent years as a âcalculating, improvisatory, essential poetâ by Daisy Fried in the New York Times, and as âthe foremost poet-critic of our timeâ by Craig Dworkin, Charles Bernstein is a leading voice in American poetry. Near/Miss, Bernsteinâs first poetry collection  in five years, is the apotheosis of his late style, thick with off-center rhythms, hilarious riffs, and verbal extravagance. This collectionâs title highlights poetryâs ability to graze reality without killing it, and at the same time implies that the poems themselves are wounded by the grief of loss. The book opens with a rollicking satire of difficult poetryâproudly declaring itself âa totally inaccessible poemââand moves on to the stuff of contrarian pop culture and political cynicismâfull of malaprops, mondegreens, nonsequiturs, translations of translations, sardonically vandalized signs, and a hilarious yet sinister feed of blog comments. At the same time, political protest also rubs up against epic collage, through poems exploring the unexpected intimacies and continuities of âour united fates.â These poems engage with works by contemporary paintersâincluding Amy Sillman, Rackstraw Downes, and Etel Adnanâand echo translations of poets ranging from Catullus and Virgil to Goethe, Cruz e Souza, and Kandinsky. Grounded in a politics of multiplicity and dissent, and replete with both sharp edges and subtle intimacies, Near/Miss is full of close encounters of every kind.  |
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