Charles Bernstein, “Verdi and Postmodernism”

She walks in beauty like the swans
that on a summer day do swarm
& crawls as deftly as a spoon
& spills & sprawls & booms.

These moments make a monument
then fall upon a broken calm
then fly into more quenchless rages
than Louis Quatorze or Napoleon.

If I could make one wish I might
overturn a state, destroy a kite
but with no wishes still I gripe
complaint’s a Godly-given right.

All the Whiskey in Heaven puts together selected poems from Charles Bernstein’s previous collections over the last 35 years, from Asylums to Girly Man. It also includes “A Test of Poetry” (reprinted by the Poetry Foundation) but not “Sad Boy’s Sad Boy) (Poetry). In this video, Bernstein reads two other poems from the collection, including the one that supplies its title.

Two years ago, Bernstein called for a bailout of America’s poetry culture; four years before that, he was explaining why National Poetry Month is a fraud.

5 April 2010 | poetry |