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 |
Joanna Rawson, “Wind Camp”
I can’t seduce these raucous birds.
Or sneak up on a willow while they riot there.
Look—even my shadow’s a suspect in this dark.
I can’t approach without startling from them
an insurgent cursing that gusts and stutters down the trunk.The weeping limbs ripple in alert as if they’ve been started by wind
that steals through thistle toward their camp.I can’t manage to net them in my grip.
I can’t seem to accomplish any sort of government,any hold over these unruly crows who nest in rags
and scream at the blowback their quarrelsome cries.Still, they allow me to stay in the vicinity—
many nights, right here among them, as they activate the dust
and carry on disturbing the perilous air.Even in their mercy, I believe they understand
my wanting to end their song.
Unrest is the second collection by Joanna Rawson; it’s not easy to find other poems of hers online, but you can find reviews aplenty—like the praise from The Rumpus that describes Unrest as “an exercise in active observation, even when observing is unnerving.” Or the even more enthusiastic tribute at Corduroy Books: “She… lays down achingly beautiful art which has, at its heart, a dead-serious and steely-eyed consciousness.”
In an interview last fall, Rawson discussed her transition from journalist to poet: “It seems important to keep on using the language in flexible, expressive, surprising ways. It gives exercise to what we say—good poetry gives great shapeliness and elasticity and expanded boundaries to the language, and keeps it exciting when merchandising, marketing and selling try so hard to reduce and kill it… Poetry’s never old-fashioned in this sense—poetry always finds ways to ride the waves, even and maybe especially the technological ones.” If you live in Iowa City, you’ll have a chance to hear her read from Unrest at Prairie Lights.
1 April 2010 | poetry |
Our Endless and Proper Work is my new book with Belt Publishing about starting (and sticking to) a productive writing practice. 
