Be(a)ware of the Ast
An essay on Charles Bernstein’s poem “Twelve-Year Universal Horoscope” at The Paris Review.
Key: You are going to read a counter-horoscope of the “Twelve-Year Universal Horoscope”[1] by Charles Bernstein. But, you can sense the opposition only if you do not read/hear/listen all text in parentheses— or you read in the manner ─ Aswathama is dead, (but it is an elephant) ─ uttering loudly the first phrase and silently the text in parentheses. Yudhishthira, the highest truthful person of the Indian epic Mahabharata, had to tell the lie in the disguise of truth to Dronacharya, their teacher whose son’s name was also Aswathama, so that their teacher steps back from the war of Kurukshetra since there was no other way to defeat him. Lying for the purpose of deception, yet maintaining his/her own truthfulness!
Caution:
The pataquerical poet Charles Bernstein has presented his horoscope in the disguise of an astrologer. In this difficult time of Covidic pandemic around the world, people have lost their faith on government, on science and easily can be duped by any astrologer. So be(a)ware of him before out-stepping into this pataquerulous zone of artifice.
First point:
The astrologer suggests you to “prefer alcohol” throughout the twelve years of his predictions. You must be already aware of the poem “Be Drunken” translated from Baudelaire by Bernstein, the counterpart of the astrologer:
Be always drunk. That’s all: that’s the only question. So not to
feel the horrific heaviness of Time weighing on your shoulders,
crushing you to ground, you must be drunken ceaselessly.But on what? On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, in your fashion.
But drunken be.
[2016b: Recalculating, 181]
This is the reason of his suggestion.
Since you have cross the caution to reach up to this point, I could sense your challenging spirit not to accept any prediction without critical inquiry.
Let us start.
Suppose, you are drunk on wine, it will slow down your brain’s function, resulting poor judgment even on yourself. Then definitely, you will start to adjudge the merits of any aesthetic work by morality, fixed by conventional institutions. Now the etymology of morality says that an action is right or true only if it has a previous history. That is to say that morality resists innovation, consequently resists reconvention. With your drunken judgment of morality, you can’t go for any invention and hence you will stick to the convention. Therefore, shrugging off “Time” of horrific convention fails.
Suppose, you are drunk on virtue, it will act oppositely. In this queasy state of pandemic, you are so obsessed with the word “virtue” that you jump to the poetry, which gives you any clue of virtue. So, you have definitely read Bernstein’s poem “The Honor of Virtue” while Recalculating:
What I say is what I mean
& what I saw is what I said
But neither seen nor spoke
Is what I think I thought
[2016b: Recalculating, 34]
What he says is just what he sees, but not what he thinks. And you already know that thought is the response of our memory. And memory means old, which is gold as per the conventional institutions. So he is trying to artifice you not to get that gold but to that yet to be unfold. What is yet to be unfold is still unknown to you. Bernstein is trying to influence you to jump into this darkness of unknown, where darkness is neither metaphysical nor spiritual darkness, but the darkness of language, pregnant with “awkwardness, flailing, disbalance, arrhyththmia, dysraphism.” [2016a: Pitch, 194]
You could see that all are medical terms, someway related to dysfunctions/defects like “Dysraphism” is a word used by specialists in congenital disease to mean a dysfunctional fusion of embryonic parts—a birth defect.” [1987. The Sophist, 37]. For more information, you may read the footnote given for the poem “Dysraphism” by Bernstein.
anecdote: caution ─ Bernstein’s influence may have a causal effect on you to suffer with influenza, due to the conjunction of Saturn and Pluto as his counterpart astrologer predicts in horoscope─ “As Saturn and Pluto come into alignment, prepare for irrepressible nostalgia”. This is because influence and influenza have the same medieval Latin origin─ influentia, with the belief that epidemics were caused by unusual conjunctions of the stars.
Now, suppose, you are drunk on poetry, then you are lost. Because this poet cum astrologer does not predict with physics, not even Meta, but with Pata. He explores a queer inquiry into reality with Jarryan ’Pataphysics ─ “swerve-inducing science of imperceivable solutions to the opaque problems” [2016a: Pitch, 171]. You already know that Bernstein has written a fantasy in 140 fit ─ “The Pataquerical Imagination” ─ that charges the dynamic dark energy of audience.
As a matter of fact I must tell you at this point that dark energy is still unknown to science and the term pataquerical deals with three q’s: queered, quixotic, querulous. All are in opposition to your straight (not bent) thought. To valorize his queer (new) poetics, it is obvious that he will dupe (encourage) you “to make intuitive leaps: to interenact rather than passively consume”, because he thinks, “the wildness of the imagination is the greatest guarantor not only of freedom but also of reality” [2016a: Pitch, 212].
anecdote: interenact ─ coined by Bernstein to make reader’s life miserable (enjoyable) ─ not only interact, but inter-enact to make it happen.
Therefore, the net result you get in hand by his prediction ─ unknown, queer inquiry, intuition, imagination, opaque problems, and imperceivable solutions. All are having negative market value! That is the ‘value’ we take into account to judge anything in our life. Bernstein may try to convince (inspire) you with the negative value of poetry and poetics of pataquericalism by saying that, “the pataquericals in my lists are negatives. But negatives have a queer way of becoming positives, especially for those for whom such tactical reversals might create a space of greater freedom” [2016a: Pitch, 316].
Everyone is having his own definition of freedom. What is the meaning of freedom to you? That is the only thing, which activates your action of going away from or towards the astrologer’s horoscopic zone.
Just think of.
And be(a)ware of the astrologer.
Second Point:
The astrologer proposes to “avoid planar surfaces” to mean to live not in two dimensional, but in multidimensional space of poetry because he is a poe-desic (like geodesic) poet to take always space-time into account, so that the straight line between two points (words) looks like a curve. That is to mean that your simple (flat) thought will be bent by pull of gravity of the poet’s thought. Again he is trying to dupe (inspire) you by the norm of his poetics ─ Curve Continuously. You must have read Bernstein’s poem
“The Human Abstract”
The shortest distance
between two points
is love.
[2001: With String, 35]
Now if you recalculate your love with Bernsteinian Poe-desic thought, your plane love will appear as curve. His intention is as flat as a flounder. As soon as your love is curve, you will start flaunting. His flaunting intension is due to metamorphosis of his views like metamorphosis of the eyes of flounder fish, because Kafka is one of his associations in his linguistic turn. Don’t take it as a pun or “slippages of language” because he can transform that to show off “more vulgar or visceral or intrusive aspects of slipping”, and that metamorphosis is the rhythm of his poetry as he pitches:
It’s a way to bring into play everyday experience, which is constantly filled with disruptions and obstacles that you don’t overcome, that trip you up. I’m compulsively drawn to tripping; slippage is also bewitching, as one particular dissolves into another, as with word transformations and metamorphosis and substitution, the slips and slides within language. But you might not feel the bumps. I’m obsessed by the clubfoot, pied-bot type of bump. It’s the rhythm of my poetry. [2016a: Pitch, 270].
So he can transform the bumps of experience into rhythm of poetry and “rhythm is something heard. Metrical verse emphasizes symmetry and uniformity. My own impulses are toward asymmetry and syncopation: the off-balance, the slant, the microtonal, but still with a pulse” (220).
Therefore, his passion for syncopation will make you offbeat, off-balance. Still you want to go with the horoscope given by the poe-desic poet cum astrologer?
anecdote: poe-desic─ desi can be pronounced in Bengali to remean poe-desic as someone/something born in the land of Poe -> “The tomb of Edgar Poe is the birthplace of pataquerics” (299).
Just think of.
And be(a)ware of the astrologer.
Third Point:
The astrologer advices in horoscope to “reach out to long-estranged family members to say life is better without you. Don’t back away from regrets.”
Suppose, you say “life is better without you” to your estranged better half, who has not yet divorced, will definitely file for divorce now! Please don’t lead yourself by the misleading (hilarious) rhetoric.
You already know Charles Olson’s The Special View of History — “Plato, who used the word ‘mouth’ as an insult, to say it lies, and called poets muthologists─ don’t tell the truth, and so mislead the Commonwealth.”[2]
So be(a)ware of language. Don’t take at face value, because its face is always under the veil of sarcasm. And sarcasm is one of the most important poetic tools of this satirist language poet Bernstein.
The astrologer advices you, “Look over your back before making sudden move” to see from where you are, because “You don’t really—you can’t and I don’t want to!—obliterate conventions. But you can call them into question, voice them, or flip them around.” That is the concept of his aversion— “which is a swerving-away-from—is more appealing and also more accurate than the idea of breakage and transgression. [2016a: Pitch, 262].
anecdote: avert─ originates from Latin avertere, from ab– ‘from’ + vertere ‘to turn’─ that is to turn your thought which is not at all appealing to you I guess.
The astrologer points out that “Outer Andromeda is fragmenting into deep time shallows: Time to stop the ambivalence and say no.”
You already know that the geological changes occur within the scale of deep time, the gradual movement of evolutionary change, which is beyond human experience. A poet not only has to be conscious about time, but also has to go beyond that to know the evolution, devolution, their cycles, causes and tensions to witness to the events of history. Bernstein is not looking for truth as convention, but looking for evidence, looking for the connections of the fragments falling from Andromeda into deep time shallows, which appears discrepant in the new poetic zone of Bernstein and he wants to connect/reconfigure them to make constellation as he pitches:
My work is connecting that which appears discrepant, to call those discrepancies into account and in the process create a new modalities of configuration. That is, the desire is for not just the constellations but, more, the possibilities for configuration. Reconvening brings to the table emergent or unrecognized or stigmatized conventions. So while there is a swerving from convention, there is, at the same time, a reorienting to the possibility of conventions as provisional, as democratic social space. This is the essence of poetic rhythm. [2016a: Pitch, 262].
anecdote: My point is that people used constellations for navigation before the compass was invented. Now you have compass in hand. Then what is the use of going for constellation today? Is it a literary paradox (to reveal a deeper meaning behind a contradiction) of this paradoxical poet?
Bernstein may argue that, “temporal conjunctions between discrepant collage elements, giving the spatial sensation of overlay and the temporal sensation of meandering thought.” (148)
But as you know overlay is a computing process to transform your internal memory to replace what you have already stored and meandering means to proceed aimlessly. So as a result of this collage or constellation you will lose your memory just for no purpose, just for wander aimlessly.
Just think of.
And be(a)ware of the astrologer.
Fourth Point:
The astrologer says, “Pegasus wars with Orion”— Pegasus, the horse, the symbol of power, the symbol of institution run by Kantian rationalism, the poetic authority, will always be in war to resist any Orion, the adventurist, the talented individual, who explores to achieve lasting positive impact as mariner’s compass for navigation into reality. Bernstein writes in the poem “War Stories”, that “War is conflict resolution for the aesthetically challenged” but also “War is the legitimate right of the powerless to resist the violence of the powerful.” [2006: Girly Man, 149].
As Gertrude Stein writes, “Active is the name of a horse”[3] and poetry is an active process of thinking to explore the possibilities for expression to go beyond logical understanding, and beyond conventional reasoning. So, don’t let your thought pulled by a train of horses as Bernstein writes: “Don’t let the Proper Name horse lead the active thinking cart.” [2016b: Recalculating, 4]
So it is obvious that the conventional principle of Pegasus will be always in war with inventional principle of Orion. There comes the function of Pyxis, the small and faint constellation, which resembles the pataquerical sublime: “split, furrowed, creased, mottled, stained” as William Carlos William said in “Paterson”, quoted by Bernstein [2016a: Pitch, 300].
Pataquerical poets, forked by preconception of rationality, always keep conflict as their aesthetic quiver for their bent studies and continuously explores all forms of existence inside the “dominated and dominatrix” environment of poetic culture, with a gesture of “opposing” oscillating with “composing” which is named and coined by Bernstein as—“com(op)position”—. [2016a: Pitch, 295].
anecdote: Oscillate means to move back and forth between two points (not points, but actions) which doesn’t lead you to reach anywhere (reaching means closure, where there is no poetry; reaching means putting ourselves into the system of rule, authority, where there is no poetry).
Oscillation between “opposing” and “composing” leads to mutual coexistence as Bernstein pitches─ “The kind of poetry I want doesn’t tell you what to do, but it does help you to think about the issues, to reconceptualize the problems, again going back to the site of the convention, which helps us to reconvene/rethink the terms of our mutual coexistence.”(271)
That is the reason the astrologer suggests to “Seek bougainvillea”, the flower which was named by Rabindranath Tagore as “Bagan-Bilas” (Bengali: Bagan─ garden; Bilas─ pleasure) ─ pleasure of mutual coexistence in a garden made by our own chosen plants/flowers to echo Bernstein, “I am gardener, but flower too;/ In the world’s dungeon I am not alone.” [2016b: Recalculating, 28]
The astrologer’s Jewish nose (responsiveness) is very sharp (sensible). He could smell (sense) the sufferings of others and says truly ─ “Smells intensify in arboreal regions”. That is the smell of sufferings in the arboreal landscapes of bent poetics, which arises due to constant resistance of bent, mute, marginalized, silenced poetics by the dominant politics of language of the official verse culture, as the poet pitches, “Satan has learned the trick of not smelling; but suffering flesh still stinks. That’s the smell of social truth”(18). Satan is the devil stigmatized by God, the evil silenced by good.
anecdote: truly─ opposite is falsely, and sarcasm is also intends to convey the opposite of the meaning.
Are you still ready to join in this bent studies? The astrologer has given a caution in his horoscope, “old lover come to mind, posing immediate threat.”
anecdote: lover is meant not to your better half but your whole rationalism.
As you know and Merriam dictionary also confirms that the Pegasus symbolizes poetic inspiration. But Bernstein says “inspiration is being used as cover for a refusal to think”. So his way he writes in his My Way:
I’m more drawn to speak of intuition than inspiration. Intuition is a crucial term to describe a working practice of poetry…. it suggests an arena for judgment based on hunches, guesses, quick assessments. [1999: My Way, 69-70].
You already know that intuition is a mystic term as we have seen in Eastern mysticism (modern science confirms the intuitive process). Are you ready to enter into this mystic arena leaving your long-drawn Western rationalism since Descartes? Don’t you think that mysticism is fake? But wait, the poet gives reasons in favor of this mystic intuition under the veil of rationalism:
I maintain a deep affection for the realm of reason, a realm that goes beyond rationality but that is not irrational. Reason incorporates intuition. . . surely it involves the unconscious, but the unconscious is part of the mind and part of reason.[2016a: Pitch, 264]
Oxford lexico[4] says, as a noun, beyond means the unknown, especially in references to life after death. What is the purpose of going to that beyond, the unknown life after death? You are already sitting on the debris of death due to Covidic pandemic. Are you ready at this moment to listen these reasoning of the poet to overcome your “Fear of Flipping”?[5]
Just think of.
And be(a)ware of the astrologer.
Fifth Point:
The astrologer predicts, “Turbulence in the nebula”. Why this turbulence at all! Is it the turbulence of the poetic nebula of the official verse culture? Since Bernstein coined this culture, he must be talking about the same and pointing out the turbulence due to the haunting specter of Bernsteinian pataquericalism with the sword of “Artifice of Absorption” to reduce its viscosity to increase the infiltration of “others”. The sword is made by the principle of “Impermeability” and “Antiabsorption” in contrast to “Absorption” along the absorption lines of the nebular spectrum, where the terms are defined by Bernstein as:
By absorption I mean engrossing, engulfing completely, engaging, arresting attention, reverie, attention intensification, rhapsodic, spellbinding, mesmerizing, hypnotic, total , riveting, enthralling: belief, conviction, silence.
Impermeability suggests artifice, boredom, exaggeration, attention scattering, distraction, digression, interruptive, transgressive, undecorous, anticonventional, unintegrated, fractured, fragmented, fanciful, ornately stylized, rococo, baroque, structural, mannered, fanciful, ironic, iconic, schtick, camp, diffuse, decorative, repel lent, inchoate, programmatic, didactic, theatrical, background muzak, amusing: skepticism, doubt, noise, resistance.
[1992: A Poetics, 29-30].[6]
You already know that the word Artifice comes from Latin─ artificium─ ars, art (‘art’) + facere (‘make’) to mean the clever or cunning devices or expedients, especially as used to trick or deceive others─ as per Oxford dictionary.
Yes, I know that you, like me, restrict yourself by dictionary, the pre-conceived meaning, and that is the very restriction what Bernstein revealed in this “Artifice of Absorption” ─ “Such a restricted sense of meaning is analogous to the restricted senses of knowledge as stipulatively definable”. That is the reason why he insists that, meaning is to be discovered, not handed over by semantic authority, because “the meaning is not something seated behind the words, but something revealing itself in the words”(145). Artifice is to provide the reader the possibility for an extension of meaning against the easy “absorption” used by convention that generates the obvious problem of “other” ─ “The obvious problem is that the poem said in any/ other way is not the poem” (16) because “the meaning of which I speak is not meaning as we may “know” it”. (17)
Who is the “other”? ─ the pataquericals, stigmatized as unofficial by the official verse culture for their impermeability.
Now it is your turn to choose your way. Yes, I am also like you─ an easygoing person, don’t want to be deceived/stigmatized by any artificing device to become unofficial.
We are happy with the Romantic reverie to be engrossed and engulfed completely by poet’s thoughts, which arrest and intensify our attention. Bernstein may caution (to open your mind) you that this hypnotic, self-absorbed addressing is not for you, the reader, but for some beloved or god or the poet her/himself─ a type of paranoia─ instead of which he may suggest schizophrenia─ where frequent distraction, interruption, scattering of attention and boredom will “play” instead of “purpose”. Be careful and stick to your own happiness.
anecdote: “poetry has no purpose, but that is not its purpose” [2018: Near/Miss, 75].
We are happy to be enthralled by belief or conviction of subjectivity or references given in poem. The Language poet Bernstein may allure (assure) you by telling that, though L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E was started by the use of language to divorce references, but this expanded field of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E gives an idea of remeaning and oblique references by saying that, the “meaning and reference do not disappear from this new poetry, but other ways of making meaning, and a greater range of possibilities for linguistic reference, are activated.” [2016a: Pitch, 68]. Be careful and stick to your own happiness.
anecdote: Psychologist says, physical, but not mental, separation is better than divorce to keep an option of persuasion.
Are you ready to accept this Bernsteinian artifice of “Impermeability” and “antiabsorption” ─ an artifice of not creation but decreation; not synthesis, but antithesis; not presence, but absence.
Just think of.
And be(a)ware of the astrologer.
Sixth Point:
The astrologer predicts, “Dark Matter in retrovariance.” First of all we are the lovers of light. What to do with this counter-light “Dark Matter”?
As you already know that dark matter is neither black nor dark matter. It is dark in the sense that we can’t ‘see’ it, something transcendent, existing apart from and not subject to the limitations of material universe, not realizable in experience as Kantian rationalism, something that falls in the dark/unknown courtyard of God, the divinity that pervades all nature and humanity.
Even the great Newtonian universe with its three-dimensional space of classical Euclidean geometry is in support of this belief of observer-independent reality. There space and time are absolute ─ space is always at rest and unchangeable and time is flowing smoothly from the past through the present to the future without any connection with you or the material world. In this mechanistic view, every event becomes predetermined (causal determinism).
But as you already know that modern science proves that there is no observer-independent reality. All events of the material world are only the instantaneous vibrational patterns of the superstring, spread over the space-time, engaged in endless infinite rhythm (This is the cosmic rhythm what Bernstein always talks about). Hence, our perception of the world through which we think and reason can’t be predetermined.
This leads to the astrologer’s “retrovariance” ─ reviving the conventional styles from recent past, falling in the “deep time shallows”, to capture the lost glamour with variance from determinacy to indeterminacy. That is to say varience from observer-independent to observer-dependent where observer for poetry is you, the reader, whose imagination will be activated by the poet in the poem’s imaginary/utopian space so that the reader can “interenact” with the poem to comprehend this changing reality in multidimension instead of unidimension.
Also variance from transcendence to immanence, where deterministic objective reality dissolves into subjective indeterminacy because all our experiences are the manifestations of our continuous interactions with the material world, which are not static, but vibrating and engaged in endless rhythm and actions.
Bernstein says, “The shortest distance from transcendence to immanence is hilarity.” [1999: My Way, 187] If you say poetry is not the act of hilarity, but of sincerity, then Bernstein will quote Amberian to convince you that “sincerity is closest to deception.”
anecdote: utopia─ Greek origin─ ou (“no”) and topos (“place”). So you are again stuck (flying) with the concept of “no place”.
I like to bring your attention to the phrase utopian space of poem. Please don’t think that I discover this term to counter the astrologer’s horoscope. Rather Bernstein himself mentioned the “soothing” method in Poe’s short story “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether” in his fantasy “The Pataquerical Imagination” as “the basis for a pataqueroid utopia in which no standard of normalcy is enforced” [2016a: Pitch, 307] to support the abnormalcy of his Pataquericalism.
Are you ready to enter into this utopian space to leave your normalcy to enter into the suggested abnormalcy? Just think of.
Of course, “Moods conform with waning and waxing moon” as the astrologer predicts in his horoscope. And that surely inflect the meaning that lies behind your poetry as Emerson saw in his “Experience” ─ “Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus”[7].
As you know that waning of moon only suggests you to find some new approach to reach your goal and waxing of moon suggests you to inquire about your progress towards your goal what you have hoped for. However, Bernstein writes:
Hope gives way
to tire tracks. On the
way without stipulating
the destination
the better
to get there (somewhere, other)
[1994: Dark City, 17].
Please remember it is dark city only, no light is there! Always load-shading─ with the excessive load of the “less-than-idealized reality” on the creating plant of poems in our brain, the queer (new) reality. You aimed to reach somewhere, but actually reach “somewhere, other”! What is the point of aim then?
anecdote: less-than-idealized reality─ termed by Bernstein to mislead you to the reality (to lead you to the factual reality leaving the one you pretend to inhabit) which is not actual but less than (nearest to) ideal. What is the difference between actual and factual?
However, Bernstein argued that,
It is not what you’ve got that counts, nor the gold in your pocket, nor the marble in your mind’s eye. Not, that is, the canonical statue symbolizing the achievement of the goal but our loitering in between where we were and where we are going; our lingering in reality without dissembling that we have gotten to an other side. [2016a: Pitch, 99]
This is because Bernstein always valued the process over predetermined or fixed goals, he wants not the effect, but to affect; not the result, but the impact; not the product, but the process. During the process there may be error and Bernstein inquires ─ “Does the poem allow its error to lead? rupture? collapse? rapture?” and he likes to go with, “Tumble, sunder, fake, fall. These are not only my subjects but also practice (makes imperfect).” [2016b: Recalculating, 10].
And his fake practice is confirmed by Bernstein’s poem “autopsychographia” to provide an auto generated psychograph as a phobia of poets:
Poets are fakers
Whose faking is so real
They even fake the pain
They truly feel [8]
anecdote: “autopsychographia”─ A poem by Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa and Bernstein used the poem “autopsychographia” to confirm his fake practice and to provide an auto generated psychograph as a phobia of poets.
Just think of.
And be(a)ware of the astrologer.
Seventh Point:
The astrologer proposes in Horoscope, “Turn no one away. Gold is buried just beyond shoreline.” That is to say that don’t reject/transcend the “other” poetics under the veil of universalism or homogenization, even if it is complementary or oppositional, because resistance against the dominance only can open up contradiction, difference, or dialectic and rejection act as an inspiration of writing as Bernstein says:
The attempt to quell the poetic other is the ultimate provocation to write more poetry and write it otherwise. [2016a: Pitch, 298].
The astrologer used the geoscience of change of Earth’s magnetic field to reveal the present scenario of poetic culture, and predicts the “Magnetic fields from the melting polar caps run roughshod over love life.” He is trying to point out to the magnetic attraction of your love/romanticism for your better half (for modernism and avant-gardism), which is slowly shifting as the polar ice caps rapidly melting due to the heat generated in bed by your arguments of who is right or wrong (in official verse culture by the pataquerical poets, as Bernstein describes, “A specter is haunting official verse culture—the specter of pataquericalism. All the forces have entered into a nepohumanist[9] alliance to exorcise this specter”) [2016a: Pitch, 294].
The astrologer predicts the great conjunction of two first-wave modernists Ezra Pound and Gertrude stein in his horoscope─ “Jupiter crosses Saturn in perfect Equinity Semblance: keep measured distance from newcomers.”
Semblance is not same but apparent resemblance or a family resemblance, in Wittgenstein’s sense which gives the concept of Bernsteinian aversion:
You actually feel the process of moving away and moving toward rather than a splitting or disconnection or decoupling. I’m interested in the rhythmic relationships that occur, moving in, around, and about convention. Because my work is entirely dependent upon convention. [2016a: Pitch, 262].
It doesn’t mean that Bernstein writes traditional poems, but an aversion to tradition with constant convening and reconvening of language with the idea of Stein’s “continuous present,”
Stein is Saturn, who leads or guides to the concept of poet’s radical contemporaneity, who maintained a “measured distance” to make her composition distinctly different from her contemporary Ezra Pound, but align with William Carlos William. “Composition as Explanation”, her essay, where she rejects the basic idea of the avant-gardian concept of being ahead of its time to reveal that “No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who also are creating their own time refuse to accept.”[10]
The astrologer envisages that “Saturn is lodestar whose course tracks in avoirdupois: pound for feckless, dram for egress, stone for gravitation”. This astrographic identity gives me an idea of the Avoirdupois system of measuring weight which uses pound and ounce as unit ─ became standardized in a country which uses Ezra Pound as a unit of “mass + aesthetic force” ─ pointing to the “American poetry tradition that begins with Pound and Williams”. [2016a: Pitch, 138].
anecdote: aesthetic force -> force due to gravity of poet’s thought.
Stein’s “meaning” in a poem acts as Dram ─ Dynamic Random Access Memory of the modern computing world ─ for egress where “it brings a dynamically diurnal intimacy with the feeling of time passing, from morning to evening, as well as the movements of meaning through the changes of resting, mounting, resignation, recognition, and recurrence.” [2016a: Pitch, 91].
anecdote: egress -> progress is social distancing with e to transform itself as egress in Covidic online era.
Stein’s Tender Buttons is the “stone for gravitation” that bears the weight of the gravitational aesthetic force ─ “the touchstone work of radical modernist poetry, the fullest realization of the turn to language and the most perfect realization of wordness, where word and object merge.” [2016a: Pitch, 87].
The astrologer advices to “Seek cantilevers” so that you can support yourself strongly at your root with your chosen lodestar and then egress in open-ended mode to sing the song of Bernstein ─ “Rejection of Closure” ─ to turn away from a preconceived beginning, middle, and end.
But wait, don’t get deceived by his song because you, like me, are the member of the poetry production factory of official verse culture. So, first you must see what you get in hand ─ all have negative price in the marketplace of today’s poetic culture. (though Bernstein claims that this negative economy creates a negative value, which is a different kind of economy, called “exchange economy.”)
anecdote: to know more about “exchange economy” you may read but don’t listen to Pitch of Poetry by Bernstein. Please don’t connect this ‘listen’ to any audio/video presentation happening in the Covidic era.
Are you ready to accept this negativity when you are already trapped in negative economy of the present Covidic world?
Just think of.
And be(a)ware of the astrologer.
Eighth point:
The astrologer has quoted “The seraph / Is satyr in Saturn, according to his thoughts” from Notes toward a Supreme Fiction, by Wallace Stevens, on the point “It Must Change”.
Is there any etymological connection of sat between Saturn and Satyr? The word Saturn originates from Latin serere, to mean, “to sow”. If you take past participle of serere ─ satus ─ you may connect it to the name satyr, taking sat as “to sow”. Whatever may be the origin, aim is to sow the seed of alternatives, whether it is physiological or psychological. Satyr is only an imagination of exaggeration where physical or mental erection is triggered by the parasympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system.
anecdote: taking past participle is no way irrational ─ after all, everything in mythology is past only, even the concept of God or the convention of good and evil.
So, everything is on sympathetic ground, or I may say empathetic ground which allow us to decipher the meaning of life or language as Bernstein is Recalculating:
I suppose I could equally say the foundation of language is empathy, that empathy is what allows us to get the sense of something, and that its absence puts us outside the possibilities for meaning. [2016b: Recalculating, 86]
anecdote: sympathy and empathy are synonymous because if you are not able to understand other’s feelings, how can you take part in someone else’s feelings!
Stevens reveled the essence of reality─ “It must change” ─ dynamic and cyclic interplay of pair of opposite forces is the essence of all changes in the world ─ centripetal and centrifugal, quark and antiquark, life and death, pleasure and pain, fortune and misfortune. Pain is a valuable asset, an apparatus to measure the true value of pleasure, as the German proverb says, fortune and misfortune are two buckets in a well.
Bernstein is not only a patapoet but also a patapsychologist to understand the root cause of the emotion you lead by and able to “see” the ‘evil’ underneath your pain with his lens of language. Accordingly he gives you the advice through astrologic horoscope to reduce your pain, “Retreat in hollow days, parry on pivots.”
Hollow day may be related to the concavity of situation that creates depression (or the depression created by the hollow space of the official verse culture). So withdraw yourself and parry not to marry, but to carry out Attack, because “Jade is talisman of recusal and redaction”, to mean that the magic power of Jade brings you the good luck, so that you can refuse to submit to any authority that wants to universalize or homogenize you.
anecdote: to marry -> to submit
In favor of Bernsteinian artifice, the astrologer advices you in the horoscope to “Seal the deal (resistance is a form of divination).” This is just to dupe (inspire) you to deal with your action of resistance against authority. And in support of that, he connects resistance to divinity. That is the normal practice of any society. When society feels/recognizes some action is useful and to be continued/followed by its member, they connect it to divinity.
As you already know from Oxford dictionary that divine means sacred, devoted to God, something related to god.
anecdote: do not read the other meaning of divine given by Oxford─ invention by intuition.
But the Nobel laureate poet Tagore defined divinity as “humanity in the varied manifestations of truth, goodness and beauty, in the freedom of activity which is not for his use but for his ultimate expression”[11], and Bernstein himself writes:
God has no doctrine, no morality, no
responsibility. To sin against God is to use that name
to justify any action or prohibition, whether murder or
martyrdom. [2018: Near/Miss, 80].
Then, what is the point of justifying your responsible action of resistance with divinity that deals with irresponsible God? Is it not that the astrologer is also trying to justify his counterpart’s artifice of action of resisting the official verse culture? Just think of.
anecdote: Recognizing a poet as a Nobel laureate or any other prize winner gives the impression of his “valuability” because only prize-winning poetry has value. If not poetic value, surely it has market value.
The astrologer predicts “The genius of misfortune / Is not a sentimentalist” from Esthetique du Mal (IV) by Wallace Stevens. Aesthetics of evil: “defy writ to rend”, the advice of the horoscope. Stevens reveals that the concept of evil is an inspirational motif for the imaginary world of a poet. Astrologer advices to challenge the code of conduct made by authority that tells you what is right or wrong, good or evil and hence Attack. Recognizing Stevens’ imaginary world, Bernstein declares ─ “Only the imaginary is real”[12] in his Rough Trades of poetry echoing the powerful tradition through William Carlos William, because “The truth of poetry is…the truth of imagination, not “facts”, [2016a: Pitch, 188].
The astrologer prescribes you to “Disable charms to charm. The following day rips away the scuff of last”─ because Bernstein, the counterpart of astrologer, believes that:
A thing of beauty is annoyed forever.
Poetry’s social function is not to express but rather to explore the possibilities for expression. [2016b: Recalculating, 4]
He explores beauty in the recognition of loss and warn you about the arrow of time, the illusion of past, present and future ─ “Time is neither linear nor circular; it is excremental/ Beauty is the memory of the loss of time” [2018: Near/Miss, 79]. Bernstein translated Baudelaire’s “maigre nudité,” in the poem “À une Mendiante Rousse” in his own style in the poem “To a Begging Redhead”
Go then, without ornament—
Perfume, pearls, diamond—
Other than your bare nudity,
O, my beauty! [2016b: Recalculating, 107]
Are you ready to accept this nude formalism which show its manifesto: “Poetry has its lower limit insincerity and upper limit dematerialization.”[13]
The astrologer counsels you to “Cleave to presenting, adjacent insistence deems purpose. Seek such sentiment (not sentimental).” Cleave to presenting to mean both dividing as well as holding together; that is the artifice of absorption used by Bernstein for his poetics where “antiabsorptive techniques are used toward absorptive ends.” Adjacent insistence matters what he calls “Stein’s insistence” that deems purpose to profess “a poetry that did not use words instrumentally but rather created a non-purpose-driven aesthetic space that allowed for pleasure in reflection, projection, and sensory engagement with verbal materials.” [2016a: Pitch, 68]. At the same time, he warns you about sentimentality because he wants poetry as “intellectual fire rather than sentimental noise.” (157).
The astrologer predicts, “Sharp descent of Calypso Cluster drags Marmolean Veil into direct imbrication.” So he advices you to “Seek adjacency” in favor of his pitch.
Now you can find that every attempt of the astrologer’s horoscope is to support Bernsteinian poetics, who has taken the mask of an astrophysician. As per the website “Astrology of the ancient”[14] ─ fake astrologers talk about the “stars.” Real astrologers talk about your planets. Now, you can find easily who is real and fake! And you have already seen in the previous point that Bernstein himself declares that “poets are fakers.”
anecdote: ““Beware a sincere man selling fish”, which means, roughly, judge a man by what he says not by his force of conviction or tone of veracity”─ Bernsteinian way [1999: My Way, 187].
Just think of.
And be(a)ware of the astrologer.
Ninth Point:
The astrologer projects, “Perpetuate fevered state, outlives livid transiencies.” ─ echoing reductio ad absurdam of Zeno’s paradox.
anecdote: Astrologer projects this due to the fact that his counterpart Bernstein is the son of pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea as he confesses in his poem “Me and My Pharaoh”— “Xeno and Heraklitus are my father’s milk” [2018: Near/Miss, 81].
As you already know the Zeno’s paradox: what is in motion moves neither in the place it is nor in one in which it is not ─ as well echo the Eastern philosophy that the manifestation of Brahma, the whole is only in parts, in “intense moments of excitement”, a Poe-tics, echoed by Bernstein as “temporal nowledge rather than atemporal knowledge.” [2016a: Pitch, 300]. In support of this, the astrologer advices you in his horoscope that “Live in, not for, the moment.”
The astrologer’s prediction: “Solar flares quash unspoken dreams but open path for development” to point to Bernsteinian pataquerical fit─ “Pataqueronormativities” ─ where he desires for renormalization: “I just want to be like everyone else like me”. The moral and aesthetic values change with time, as the Hegelian debunkers once renormalized Kantian model of morality and ethics, the principle of non-contradiction based on Aristotelian reductio ad absurdum arguments. It is the time now to renormalize the Hegelian orthodontics of the avant-gardism with a new normal of Pataqueronormative aesthetics to improve morality with ethics with the Bernsteinian contrasting idea of morality and ethics: “Morality tells you what to think, what’s right to think; ethics asks what makes us think it’s right” (249). That makes him to suggest for the Solar flares of the radical modernism to move for a new normal, which is “ethically improved morality and a radicalized, purified aesthetic duty”(326).
The astrologer suggests, “Orient Eastward for repose, Westward for reflection” to valorize his pataquericalism which is in perfect coherence with Eastern philosophy of Zen Buddhism and Western philosophy of quantumism. I must tell you that both philosophies are inconceivable as Bernstein’s poem what he himself confesses, “My poetry is not conceptual but inconceivable” [2018: Near/Miss, 165].
Are you ready to leave your conceivable classicism to enter into this inconceivable zone?
Just think of.
And be(a)ware of the astrologer.
Tenth Point:
As you already know that, the mid-Pacific region is the largest and deepest region of literary ocean. Squall line is the cold front of modernist abstraction, trailing convergence zone to create the cyclone in your mind. So the astrologer’s horoscope suggests you to “Stay totally clear on such days. Even the smallest thought can betray you. Confide only in friends from past five years and only about matters that occurred over that time.”
As a language poet Bernstein advices in the voice of astrologer to confide in poetic predecessors, not to replace them but to open up a new space of poetry, as he pitches:
The poets in the expanded field of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E were as much involved with an extension of the aesthetic and political radicalism of their poetic predecessors as with breaking with them to create new works. [2016a: Pitch, 64].
And as a pataquerical poet he limits the time zone of the poetic predecessors to five years inside your own known circle of friends. The purpose of his advice to “watch for mid-Pacific squalls” is: “The new is never new, but we make it new in order to keep it from becoming dead to us. The motto shouldn’t be make it new but make it live.” [2016b: Recalculating, 81].
But whenever poetry comes in action, there will be always a risk factor. So the astrologer warns you about the consequences:
“Signs of compatibility” ─ compatibility in astrology is the synchronicity that gives a
linguistic reference to synchronic language which does not consider its historical antecedents.
- “Sudden rain” ─ due to the formation of heavy clouds of ornamental overdosed museum abstraction: “framed as decorous as opposed to decorative, beautiful rather than sublime, tasteful not a riotous upturning of taste, logos over bathos.” [2016a: Pitch, 52] In contrast, Bernstein suggests to disfigure abstraction by pata-abstraction: “an antimimetic, non-re-presentational, investigative art practice, something that complicates and reformulates— and even breaks free from—the reification of abstraction, even if this breaking free is imaginary. (58).
anecdote: Be careful. pata ─means again oscillation between figure and nonfigure, appearance and disappearance, where non─ absence of and dis─ opposite of. So, the product you get in hand is nothing (though Bernstein may argue that “abstraction is figuration by other means.”(50))
- “Heightened gait” ─ due to the I-centered lyrics which is the direct expressions of an author’s feelings. In contrast, Bernstein always sings with “Sprung lyric” which “stands between the sentence-driven and discursive drives of the new prose-format poems and the traditional I-centered free verse lyric of personal sincerity or epiphany”(72).
anecdote: I-centered lyrics trap you in the “internal gumption trap of ego”[15] (in Robert Pirsig’s sense).
- “Tender elbow” ─ resulting from transparency and easy absorption which makes your mind’s elbow inactive and hence remains tender, not becomes strong through “interenact”
anecdote: Tennis elbow is the Lateral Epicondylitis that happens due to overuse of elbow. anti-Tennis-elbow ─> Tender elbow ─> Romanticism.
“Signs of incompatibility” ─ in contrast to synchronicity this may refer to diachronic
language which connects you to the recent past ─ “which form us and from which we are formed” [2016a: Pitch, 111].
- “Extravagant hand motion” ─ resulting from the extravagancy of imagination with plenty of resources in “an infinite field of exquisite and extravagant nuance and metamorphosis” (283) ─ a visceral transition where “The faces in the poem are imaginary but the feelings are fantasy” [2018: Near/Miss, 68].
- “Swift and frequent eyelid clatter” ─ because your “head is bloodied and bowed./ Shudders shut and shudders open.” (68)
- “Midday drowsiness” ─ refers to disorder ─ Girly Man says, “Let’s just say that without disorder there can be no harmony” [2006: Girly Man, 11]. And without harmony between knowledge and imagination there can’t be any pataquericalism.
- “High risk of falling into Dark Matter” ─ Poetry is the inherent sound of the inner soul, charged by the invisible mysterious dark energy of mind, the source of all.
Before you jump (take a leap) to the horoscope, I must tell you that Bernstein himself writes,
the poet is a liar.
the poet is a lyre.
the poet’s tired.
[2016b: Recalculating, 123-124]
anecdote: take in account only liar and ignore the rhyme with lyre and tired because rhyme is ‘out-of-date’ now.
Just think of.
And be(a)ware of the astrologer.
Eleventh Point:
The astrologer quotes in his horoscope from Tao Te Ching, “What is most full seems empty. Yet its use will never fail.” It’s the Poe-tic principle “This poem which is a poem and nothing more”[16] ─
“Nothing/never: an echoic negation of all but the event of sound and rime as sublime and blank, full and empty, here / not here.” [2016a: Pitch, 302].
anecdote: “Empty center or blank space is the possibility of freedom.” [2011: Attack, 129].
“Nothing” is the Brahma, the whole, dwells in the blank, in the void space of our heart, it’s the dark energy, a presence in absence, existence within non-existence, a pataquerical sublime: “To be told about nothing is to come face to face with loss, despair, grief: the irreparable. Nothing repairs the world” [2016a: Pitch, 278].
The astrologer also quotes from Tao Te Ching, “What is most straight seems bent. The greatest skill seems like clumsiness. The greatest eloquence like stuttering” ─ actually “Stumpling clumpsiness for one, the eloquence of the gods for ’nother” (316) as Bernstein feels and hence attacks:
In fact normalcy of language (that is to say, standardization) is not a natural fact of human being but a highly controlled social institution to which people are forced to conform…. Clarity in writing is a rhetorical effect, not a natural fact. One man’s eloquence can be another’s poison; one woman’s stuttering may be the closest approximation of truth that we will ever know. [2011: Attack, 179].
anecdote: clumpsiness -> clumsiness. Clumpsy to point “Klupzy”, coined by Bernstein─ his poem “The Klupzy Girl” [1983 & 1992: Islets/Irritations, 47] suggests the Yiddish word klutzy (awkward). Be careful of this neologism, meant to enact verbal “clumsiness”— a kind of stutter put in by adding the p’s, to create an irritation to deprive you of the comfort of the familiar.
The astrologer suggests, “Climb to the tallest point within your reach then lie flat at the lowest point, saying these words.” ─
Please don’t try to do this. You may fall to become physically disable. It is just a trick of the astrologer to allure (assure) you to be part of “bent studies.”
But I have a different view to help you. Take a chance to follow the astrologer because chance is one of the postmodern symptoms (characteristics) against design of modern era in Ihab Hassan’s sense. Also, as you know disable─ the word is borrowed from Anglo-French desabler, from des– (“expressing negation”) + able (or from abler, derivative of able─ “to make able to inherit”). What I mean to say that disability will make one disable to inherit something. Then how can your disability leads you to inherit the Bernsteinian pataquericalism? That means this suggestion is bound to fail. Then be happy to be part of the bent studies.
anecdote: take derivative of anything anywhere for your convenience.
The astrologer says, “Saturn’s rings surround your despair: have courage! Sing a song of childhood when you feel farthest from it.”
Why to reach out to Saturn to be surrounded by despair? You are probably full to the brim with despair in this Covidic era. As a poet, Bernstein may try to induce (persuade) you that hope and despair are just Maya, the illusion of concept─ a pair of opposite forces that interplay in this dynamic world with multidimensional reality: accept the fact and have courage. Please don’t let you to be duped (moved) again.
Just think of.
And be(a)ware of the astrologer.
Twelfth point:
The astrologer predicts in his horoscope that “settled matters unravel: time to take the advantage. Tropical depressions complicate unfamiliar liaisons providing opportunities for needed adventure” ─ the prediction is actually in favor of the fantasy of Bernstein’s “The Pataquerical Imagination” ─
Over the past two decades, the stranglehold of Cold War scenic-voice poems has loosened under the pressure of the literary in(ter)ventions of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E and its partisans to let a soupçon of flowers bloom in official verse culture greenhouses. The forms demonized a few decades ago are now embraced as a mark of new inclusiveness, a fair and balanced approach to poetry styles, marking not the end to poetic ideology but an indefinite cessation. It is high time that pataquericalists should openly, in the face of the whole poetry world, display their views, parade their aims, parody their tendencies, and meet this old husband’s tale of the specter of Bent Studies with a whoosh & higgly hoot & a he-ho-hah. [2016a: Pitch, 295].
But you may be knowing that the above quotation from his essay is marked as a facsimile, and as per Bernstein’s explanation ─ “It is a facsimile without any original. That is what writing is, in its reproducibility.”
So you are again going to be duped (encouraged) by Bernsteinian reproducibility with the question of originality. Just think twice before out-stepping to this astrologer’s predictions.
The astrologer advices you to “catch a falling star and put it in your pocket” ─ this is to tell you to follow that falling star, the lodestar of the recent past, “fellow travelers among the dead, near dead, and just about alive”, [2016b: Recalculating, 83]. And apply calculus, which is a literary apparatus, invented by Larry Eigner to probe into poetry, and to study the continuous change of reality ─ because “the beginning never ends—the world is ever old and ever new. It is for our self to know that it must be born anew every moment of its life.”[17]
Quoting Stein, the astrologer suggests, “Act as if “there is no use in a center (Stein): galvanize desire against regret and regret against compulsory well-being.” His suggestion echo Yeats: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer;/ Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”[18], to profess Bernstein’s centrifugal journey of poetic process against centripetal, that “pulls different disparate elements together rather than projecting them outward” because “the centrifugal performance is like a piece of metal getting red-hot but collapsing into itself rather than exploding outward. I am more interested in that implosion or introversion than in explosion and extroversion.” [2016a: Pitch, 266]. This expanded field of consciousness makes you to move to a limitless, timeless, horizon-less state without any center, space, or time.
anecdote: I must tell you at this point that this journey will lead you to the state where deterministic objective reality dissolves into a subjective indeterministic probability wave, the potential possibility in the form of counterfactual reflections of reality. And, you are aware of that indeterminate means to that which doesn’t lead you to a definite end or result. Then what is the point of a journey without a result? Just think of.
Bernstein’s concept of the absent center is in coherence with that in the novella Heart of Darkness of 1902 by Polish immigrant novelist Joseph Conrad. The novella provides a menu of half-dozen interpretative modes against the rigid segmentation of frames of interpretation ─ “reader-response, deconstructive, psychoanalytic, new historical, historical materialist, and feminist” which echo Bernstein’s poetics. Let me give you some examples.
anecdote: in the joy of discovering someone in favor of himself, Bernstein converts Joseph to “Joey-Joey-Joey” [1999: My Way, 69-70] for rhythm! ─ homophonic with Joy-Joy-Joy in Indian pronunciation to re-mean success/triumph.
Reader-response:
This is a totally inaccessible poem. Each word, phrase & line has been designed to puzzle you, its reader, & to test whether you’re intellectual enough— well-read or discerning enough— to fully appreciate this poem.[19](3)
Psychoanalytic:
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[1999: The sophist, 146]
anecdote: You are going to enter into the Bernstein’s utopian space where “1 plus 2 does not equal 2 plus 1….all that is solid congeals, all that melts liquefies, all that is air vanishes into the late afternoon fog.” [2016a: Pitch, 266].
Since you have entered into this foggy space, I must tell you that the poem above is a part of the poem “Amblyopia” from The sophist by Bernstein. The interesting point is that amblyopia is the medical term used when the vision in one of the eyes is reduced (again a disability of Bernsteinian bent studies) because the eye and the brain are not working together properly. The eye itself looks normal, but it is not being used normally because the brain is favoring the other eye. It is the most common cause of vision problems in children─ is it the point to reconfigure the idea of so-called maturity vs gifted childness of the poet? Because Bernstein always profess a poetics of dynamic movement to fly into the infinite sky of poetic freedom, as if flying in a spaceship, accelerating towards the speed of light and due to psychological time dilation, caused by Einstein’s special theory of relativity, his past seems to have been slowed down than us. That is the reason why Bernstein’s passion for poetry seems to last forever like a child’s summer due to his fresh memory.
Lastly, I want to tell you to counter the prediction─ “Let envy propel you to eternity”─ be(a)ware of the misspelling─ it is not eternity, but Jarryan ethernity.
anecdote: To know more about ethernity you may enter into the pataquerical zone of Alfred Jarry: Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll. But I must inform you that at the entrance you have to encounter with Brihadaranyaka,[20] literally means Great Forest-grown─ Brihad + Aaranyaka. Brihad (Sanskrit: Great). Aaranya (Sanskrit: forest) and Aaranyaka (derivative: forest-grown or forest-dweller). But this Aaranya is not the earthly forest, but the social and mental forest — the jungle of various social institutions within which we live; the jungle of various ideologies where we grasp for breath and trying to find our ways. Before entering into the Jarryan pataphysical world, you must prepare yourself to lose your sight of “the conventional boundary between reality and hallucination.”[21] [Jarry 1996, x].
Now it is your choice to decide. Before that, I must tell you that Bernstein, the counterpart of the astrologer writes in his most recent book Near/Miss:
Better a rude awakening than insidious deception. [2018: Near/Miss, 36].
Just think of.
And be(a)ware of the astrologer.
Notes
[1] “Twelve-Year Universal Horoscope”[1] by Charles Bernstein.” https://www.theparisreview.org/poetry/7466/twelve-year-universal-horoscope-charles-bernstein
[2] Olson, Charles. 1970. The Special View of History. Edited by Ann Charters. Berkeley: Oyez.
[3] Gertrude Stein, To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays, New Haven ; London : Yale University Press
[4] Oxford Lexico – https://www.lexico.com/definition/beyond
[5] Poem in Rough trade by Bernstein
[6] Poem “Artifice of Absorption” included in A Poetics by Charles Bernstein, cited in Bernstein 1992.
[7] “Experience” (1844), www .emersoncentral.com /experience .htm. cited in [Bernstein 2016a].
[8] A Poem by the Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher, described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language. The poem is translated into English by Charles Bernstein, first published in Sibila: Revista de poesia e crítica literária (Magazine of poetry and literary criticism) in 2010 and collected in the poetry collection Recalculating by Charles Bernstein in 2016 as cited in [2016b: Recalculating, 3]. The online source of the poem both in Portuguese and English─ http://sibila.com.br/mapa-da-lingua/autopsychographia-by-fernando-pessoa/3503.
[9] Nepohumanism (also called necrohumanism and hypohumanism), coined by Charles Bernstein, universalizes one’s immediate preferences while stigmatizing as barbaric those that are not immediately intelligible. Cited in [Bernstein 2016a].
[10] Bernstein quotes in his essay “Gertrude Stein: The Difference Is Spreading” from Gertrude Stein, Composition as Explanation, originally published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press in 1926. Cited in [Bernstein 2016a].
[11] Essay “Creative Unity” by Rabindranath Tagore. Cited in [Tagore 2017 (1922)]
[12] Poem “The Kiwi Bird in the Kiwi Tree,” from Rough Trades by Charles Bernstein. Cited in [Bernstein 1991].
[13] Poem “Fragments from the Seventeenth Manifesto of Nude Formalism” from Nude Formalism by Charles Bernstein. Cited in [Bernstein 1989].
[14] Website Astrology of the ancient”-https://www.astrologyoftheancients.com/real-astrologers/
[15] Robert M. Pirsig’s concept of internal gumption trap as explained in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, 1974, London: Vintage Books.
[16] Edgar Allan Poe, The Poetic Principle, cited by Bernstein in Pitch of Poetry.
[17] Essay “The Problem of Self” by Rabindranath Tagore. Cited in [Tagore 2017 (1922)]
[18] “The Second Coming” poem by W.B.Yeats, from The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989), source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming
[19] Poem “Thank You for Saying You’re Welcome” from Near/Miss by Charles Bernstein as cited in [2018: Near/Miss, 3].
[20] Alfred Jarry starts his novel Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, Pataphysician with an epigraph from Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, which is the last part of Yajurveda, one of the four Vedas, the oldest Sanskrit scripture of Hinduism: “There are eight abodes, eight places of sight, eight deities, and eight Purushas. Whoever understands those Purushas in their division, and again in their union, has overcome the world. I ask thee about the Purusha in the Upanishads. And thou explain not him to me, thy head will fall off.” S’akalya knew him not, so his head fell off. Moreover robbers took away his bones, mistaking them for something else.” cited in [Jarry 1996].
[21] Roger Shattuck’s introduction to Alfred Jarry’s “neo-scientific” novel Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, Pataphysician as cited in [Jarry 1996].
Works Cited
Bernstein, Charles. 1987. The Sophist. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press.
———. 1989. Nude Formalism. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press.
———. 1991. Rough Trades. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press.
———. 1992. A Poetics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
———. 1994. Dark City. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press.
———. 1999. My Way: Speeches and Poems. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2001. With String. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
———. 2006. Girly Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
———. 2011. Attack of the Difficult Poems: Essays and Inventions. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
———. 2016a. Pitch of Poetry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
———. 2016b. Recalculating. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
———. 2018. Near/Miss. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Jarry Alfred. 1996. Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, Pataphysician. Translated by Symon Watson Taylor. Cambridge, MA: Exact Change Boston.
Tagore, Rabindranath. 2017 [1922]. The Complete Works of Rabindranath Tagore. New Delhi, India: General Press.