All That Glitters Is not Costume Jewelry: Alan Gilbert Interviews Charles Bernstein

ALAN GILBERT: You’re the author of over a dozen books of poetry containing a wide variety of styles—from rigorous avant-garde techniques, to a form of disjunctive lyricism, to rhymed doggerel. How did you go about selecting the work for All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems, which stretches across more than thirty years, beginning with a poem from 1975?

CHARLES BERNSTEIN: Jackson Mac Low called his 1986 selected poems from Roof Books Representative Works: 1938–1985. The idea was that each included piece represented a particular structure or form he used. I think of All the Whiskey in Heaven as a sampler or array. It’s a constellation of approaches to poetry. Beyond the experience of the poems themselves, I hope the book brings to mind the possibilities of poetry. I’ve done only one other collection of otherwise published work, Sun & Moon’s 2000 book, Republics of Reality: 1975–1995, which brought together the full texts of a number of out-of-print books and pamphlets, plus one new series, “Residual Rubbernecking.” Rubbernecking is when you slow your car to peer at an accident; residual rubbernecking is when you stop and stare at the site of an accident no longer present. So I guess you could say that All the Whiskey in Heaven is a product of my residual rubbernecking.

Too Much of a Good Thing?

Tonight there's two great events to choose from in New York City. We couldn't decide which to attend, so we flipped a coin. (It came up tails!)

Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney at Hunter College
The Hunter College Distinguished Writers Series

6:30 pm, Hunter College Assembly Hall, North Building 1st Floor
69th St., between Park Ave & Lexington Ave.

Event is free and open to the public, but reservations are required.

A Celebration of James Schuyler's Other Flowers at the Poetry Project
Featuring Other Flowers editors Simon Pettet and James Meetze, as well as an incredible lineup of readers: Anselm Berrigan, Tom Carey, John Coletti, Bill Corbett, Elaine Equi, Jonathan Galassi, Vincent Katz, Eileen Myles, Charles North, Arlo Quint, Stacy Szymaszek, Susie Timmons, Geoffrey Young and Anne Waldman.

8pm, at St. Marks Church
131 E. 10th Street

Details

In the Company of Charles Bernstein

Charles Bernstein is a poet and essayist. FSG published his most recent book All the Whiskey in Heaven in March. 

Robert Creeley liked to call those of us who shared his life in, and commitment to, poetry company. Over the last few years, I find the company I keep ever harder to keep up with, just in terms of the sheer and exhilarating range of work. Still, there is nothing I like more than making my way through the wealth of new poetry books, both by younger poets and so many of the poets who have formed my poetic horizon.

In the last few months there have been new poetry books by three of my favorite poets: Leslie Scalapino's Floats Horse-Floats or Horse-Flows (Starcherone), Tan Lin's Seven Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004. The Joy of Cooking [AIRPORT NOVEL MUSICAL POEM PAINTING FILM PHOTO HALLUCINATION LANDSCAPE] (Wesleyan), and Myung Mi Kim's Penury (Omnidawn). And in the last few years there have been collected poems by Jack Spicer (Wesleyan), Barbara Guest (Wesleyan), John Ashbery (Library of America), and Philip Whalen (Wesleyan); a collected poems and essays by Robin Blaser (California); as well as selected poems by Nicole Brossard (California), Frank O'Hara (Knopf), and Creeley (California); not to leave out Lydia Davis's Collected Stories (FSG), which may not be poetry but oughtta be (I included a few of Davis's short works in 43 Poets (1984), an anthology published as a special issue of boundary 2).

A Poetry Giveaway

This year we've partnered up with GetGlue to give away a few of our favorite poetry titles to a couple lucky readers. If you're not familiar with GetGlue, it's a service and browser plugin that allows you to recommend books, movies, and music to your friends no matter where you are online. For instance, if you review Words in Air on Amazon, and your friend sees the book on Goodreads, GetGlue will tell your friend about your review. You can sign up and find out more info here.

GetGlue has devised a system where the biggest fans of a given topic - say, poetry - are deemed "gurus" and instantly qualify for our little giveaway. If you're a web-savvy reader of poetry, consider this a reward.

Charles Bernstein Reads

Last month, FSG released Charles Bernstein’s All the Whiskey in Heaven, a long-awaited thirty-year collection of poetry from “America’s most ardent literary provocateur” (Paul Auster).

In a February reading dedicated to his daughter Emma—who took the beautiful cover photo—the poet read a selection from his book. Also a literary critic, Charles Bernstein is Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. // Adam Eaglin


Reading | Charles Bernstein