Charles Bernstein (born April 4, 1950) is an American poet, theorist, editor, and literary scholar. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is one of the most prominent members of the Language poets.

Quotes

• tire
  swift swept
  front
  ly and lie and lane
  against
  • "disfrutes" (1974), first published in 1981 by Potes & Poets Press

• she
  had
  then
  could
  cram
  had
  by
  she
  am
  • "disfrutes" (1974)

• The combination of low culture and high technology is one of the most fascinating social features of the video game phenomenon. Computers were invented as super drones to do tasks no human in her or his right mind (much less left brain) would have the patience, or the perseverance, to manage. [...] Now our robot drones, the ones designed to take all the boring jobs, become the instrument for libidinal extravaganzas devoid of any socially productive component. Video games are computers neutered of purpose, liberated from functionality. The idea is intoxicating; like playing with the help on their night off.
  • "Play It Again, Pac-Man", Postmodern Culture, vol. 2 no. 1 (September 1991)

• As part of the spring ritual of National Poetry Month, poets are symbolically dragged into the public square in order to be humiliated with the claim that their product has not achieved sufficient market penetration and must be revived by the Artificial Resuscitation Foundation (ARF) lest the art form collapse from its own incompetence, irrelevance, and as a result of the general disinterest among the broad masses of the American People. The motto of ARF's National Poetry Month is: "Poetry's not so bad, really."
  • "Against National Poetry Month As Such", from My Way: Speeches and Poems, 1999, University Of Chicago Press, ISBN 0226044092

• Poetry will never win the war on terror
  But neither will error abetted by error

  We girly men are not afraid
  Of uncertainty or reason or interdependence
  We think before we fight, then think some more
  Proclaim our faith in listening, in art, in compromise

  So be a girly man
  & sing this gurly song
  Sissies & proud
  That we would never lie our way to war

  • "The Ballad of the Girlie Man", Milk Magazine, no. 6, 2005. Anthologized in Girlie Man (2006), ISBN 0226044068.

• Not for all the fire in hell
  Not for all the blue in the sky
  Not for an empire of my own
  Not even for peace of mind
  • "All the Whiskey in Heaven", The Nation, 3 March 2008

External links

• Bibliography at Electronic Poetry Center