Attack of the Difficult Poems : Essays and Inventions

Bernstein, Charles

ISBN 10: 0226044777 / ISBN 13: 9780226044774

Published by University of Chicago Press, 2011

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 11863539-n

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Attack of the Difficult Poems : Essays and Inventions
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226044777
• ISBN 13: 9780226044774
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Charles Bernstein is our postmodern jester of American poesy, equal part surveyor of democratic vistas and scholar of avant-garde sensibilities. In a career spanning thirty-five years and forty books, he has challenged and provoked us with writing that is decidedly unafraid of the tensions between ordinary and poetic language, and between everyday life and its adversaries. Attack of the Difficult Poems, his latest collection of essays, gathers some of his most memorably irreverent work while addressing seriously and comprehensively the state of contemporary humanities, the teaching of unconventional forms, fresh approaches to translation, the history of language media, and the connections between poetry and visual art.

Applying an array of essayistic styles, Attack of the Difficult Poems ardently engages with the promise of its title. Bernstein introduces his key theme of the difficulty of poems and defends, often in comedic ways, not just difficult poetry but poetry itself. Bernstein never loses his ingenious ability to argue or his consummate attention to detail. Along the way, he offers a wide-ranging critique of literature’s place in the academy, taking on the vexed role of innovation and approaching it from the perspective of both teacher and practitioner.

From blues artists to Tin Pan Alley song lyricists to Second Wave modernist poets, The Attack of the Difficult Poems sounds both a battle cry and a lament for the task of the language maker and the fate of invention.

About the Author

Charles Bernstein, winner of the 2019 Bollingen Prize, is the Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of many books, most recently two volumes of poetry, Near/Miss and Topsy-Turvy, also published by the University of Chicago Press. He is the winner of the 2025 America Award of the Contemporary Arts Educational Project, for a lifetime contribution to international writing.