Charles Bernstein Papers

The Beinecke Library is delighted to announce the acquisition of the Charles Bernstein Papers; the collection will be available to researchers in 2015.

Poet and scholar Charles Bernstein has long been a force in American letters. The author of dozens of books, in the 1970s Bernstein co-founded the influential journal L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. He is the co-founder and co-editor, with Al Filreis, of PennSound; with Loss Pequenño Glazier, he is founder of The Electronic Poetry Center.

Bernstein’s many books of poetry include Recalculating (2012), All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems (2010), Girly Man (2006), With Strings(2001), Republics of Reality: 1975-1995 (2000), Dark City (1994), Rough Trades (1991), The Nude Formalism (1989), Stigma (1981), Legend (with Bruce Andrews, Steve McCaffery, Ron Silliman, Ray DiPalma, 1980), and Parsing (1976). He is also the author of books of essays, including: My Way: Speeches and Poems (1999), A Poetics (1992), and Content’s Dream: Essays 1975-1984 (1986). He has edited many anthologies of poetry and poetics including Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word (1998) and The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book (1984, with Bruce Andrews). Bernstein has made many works in collaboration with artists and musicians, including several operas. His collaborations with composer Ben Yarmolinsky, have been collected in Blind Witness: Three American Operas (2008). Bernstein also collaborated with composer Brian Ferneyhough on Shadowtime, an opera about the life and work of Walter Benjamin.

Elected to the fellowship of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2006, Bernstein has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is presently Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Charles Bernstein Papers includes manuscripts and typescripts of poems, essays, and other writings; notebooks; correspondence; materials related to the Poetics Program at SUNY Buffalo; and manuscripts by fellow poets and writers. The collection includes Bernstein’s voluminous email correspondence with hundreds of poets, writers, critics, artists, and scholars, as well as the poet’s library of approximately 1,000 contributor’s copies of magazines and anthologies, including those in translation and other rarities. Poets and writers represented by manuscripts and / or correspondence include: Robert Creeley, Susan Howe, Rae Armantrout, Charles Alteri, Rachel Blau DuPlessi, Johanna Drucker, Annie Finch, Peter Gizzi, Barbara Guest, Nathaniel Mackey, Ann Lauterbach, Susan Stewart, Leslie Scalapino, Clayton Eschelman, Ulla Dydo, among many others.

An incomplete list of related collections at the Beinecke Library includes: the Susan Howe Papers; the Ann Luaterbach Papers, the M/E/A/N/I/N/G Records, the Barbara Guest Papers, the Peter Gizzi Papers, and the Clayton Eshleman Papers. Addition related resources may be found in Orbis and the Finding Aid Database.

An early portion of Bernstein’s archive is in the Mandeville special collections library at UC San Diego.

Temporarily closed for technical processing, the Charles Bernstein Papers will be available to scholars and students for consultation in the Beinecke Library Reading Room in 2015 (see the Beinecke Closed Collection Schedule for details or Contact a Curator).

by Nancy Kuhl
September 18, 2014

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