Charles Bernstein - A Defence of Poetry

  • Jasmin23
    16 years ago

    Hey,

    We are doing that poem here at University. Does anybody have some info about? Best regards!

  • Jasmin23
    16 years ago

    No, he's American, one of the most famous language poets.

    CHARLES BERNSTEIN, A Defence of Poetry

    My problem with deploying a term liek
    nonelen
    in these cases is acutually similar to
    your
    cirtique of the term ideopigical
    unamlsing as a too-broad unanuajce
    interprestive proacdeure.
    You say too musch lie a steamroller when
    we need dental (I;d say jeweller's)
    tools.
    (I thin youy misinterpret the natuer of
    some of the political claims go; not
    themaic
    interpretationmn of evey
    evey detail in every peim
    but an oeitnetation towatd a kind of
    texutal practice
    that you prefer to call "nknsesne" but
    for poltical purpses I prepfer to call
    ideological!
    , say Hupty Dumpty)
    Taht is, nonesene see, msm to reduce a
    vareity of fieefernt
    prosdodic, thematic and discusrive
    enactcemnts into a zeroo degree of
    sense. What we have is a vareity of
    valences. Nin-sene.sense is too binary
    andoppostioin, too much oall or nithing
    acccount with ninesense seeming by its
    very meaing to equl no sense at all. We
    have preshpas a blurrig of sense, whih
    means not relying on convnetionally
    methods of conveying sense but whih may
    aloow for dar greater sense-smakihn than
    specisi9usforms of doinat disoucrse that
    makes no sense at all by irute of thier
    hyperconventionality (Bush's speeches,
    calssically. Indeed you say that
    nonsense sheds leds on its “antithesis”
    sense making: but teally the antithsisi
    of these poems you call nonselnse is not
    sense-making itself but perhps, in some
    cases, the simulation of sense-making:
    decitfullness, manifpultaion, the
    media-ization of language, etc.
    I don’t agree with Stewart that “the
    more exptreme the disontinuitites . . . the
    more nonsisincial”: I hear sense
    beginning to made in this sinstances.
    Te problem though is the definaitonof
    sense. What you mean by nomsense is
    soething like a-rational, but ration (and
    this does back to Blake not to meanion
    the pre-Socaratics) DOES NOT EQUAL
    sense! This realtioes to the sort of
    oscillation udnertood as rhythmic or
    prosidci, that I disusccio in Artiofice.
    Crucialy, the duck/rabitt exmaple is one
    of the ambiguity of aspects and clearly
    not a bprobelm of noneselnse: tjere are
    two competing, completely sensible,
    readings, not even any blurring; the
    issue is context-depednece )otr
    apsrevcyt blindness as Witegenstein
    Nonesesen is too static. Deosnt’t
    Prdunne even say int e eoem “sense occurs
    “at the contre-coup:: in the process of
    oscillatio itself.
    b6y the waylines 9-10 are based on an
    aphorism by Karl Kraus: the closer we
    look at a word the greater the distance
    from which it stares back.

  • sibyllene
    16 years ago

    Uh oh, he types like a 14 year old!

    But seriously, assuming it's intentional, this is kind of cool. The last line is smashing. You think there's a reason for why the ending is free of mistakes, apart from the rest of the poem? I would guess that it helps focus and center the whole piece, clarifying what came before it - showcasing the strange, adaptable nature of language. Perhaps.

  • Jasmin23
    16 years ago

    What do you think is the message of the poem?

    Structure: We can say that it is written in free blank verse.

  • Jasmin23
    16 years ago

    Would somebody like to interpret the poem a little bit?

  • Jasmin23
    16 years ago

    What's the structure?
    What's the message of the poem?
    Poetic Devices ?

  • Jasmin23
    16 years ago

    So is it a critic on society?

    The basic argument of Bernstein is that there is meaning in nonsense - but what does that mean ?!

  • abracadabra
    16 years ago

    The poet is being ironic, which is something that many writers aim to achieve, but few master. He is being ironic by being a smartass about the smartasses of the world- those who know and write big things about little things and little things about big things. The poem shows, through its purposeful lack of any formed structure or rhythm or grammar, how many poems/articles/etc can appear to many people- they can seem offensively unattractive, and more than that, they can seem like meaningless drivel. The joke lies in the fact that people still try to find some real meaning in all the nonsense, instead of the (non)sense in the real meaning. His truth lies in the few sections of the poem that are spelt clearly, and it is highlighted by the sections that are not.

    "A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men." Dahl

  • sibyllene
    16 years ago

    Leave it to abby to be the succinctly lucid one.