The Sophist [Paperback]

Charles Bernstein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1986

A pivotal book for Bernstein, The Sophist demonstrated his great range of subject matter, style, and genre. By contrasting wildly different approaches to poetry, Bernstein not only questions the intrinsic value of any given form but also provides a model for his later heterogeneous books, including My Way and With Strings.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Acquiescence
Amblyopia
Brain Side View
By Cuff
Dysraphism
Entitlement
Fear And Trespass
Foreign Body Sensation
From Lines Of Swinburne
The Harbor Of Illusion
Hitch World
I And The
The Last Puritan
Like Declarations In A Hymie Cemetery
Micmac Mall (sunset At Inverness)
The Only Utopia Is In A Now
The Order Of A Room
Outrigger
Pafnucio Santo And The American Friend
A Person Is Not An Entity Symbolic But The Divine Incarnate
Prosthesis
Renumberation
Romance
Rose The Click For 23
The Rudder Of Inexorability
Safe Methods Of Business
Searchless Warrant
The Simply
Special Pleading
Surface Reflectance
Team Bias
Total Body Clearance
Use No Flukes
The Voyage Of Life
Why I Am Not A Christian
The Years As Swatches
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Charles Bernstein was born in Manhattan in 1950. He has published 27 collections of poetry including With Strings (University of Chicago Press, 2001), Republics of Reality: Poems 1975-1984 (Sun & Moon, 2000) and Controlling Interests (reprinted by Roof in 2004). His essays are included in My Way: Speeches and Poems (Chicago, 1999) and Content's Dream: Essays 1975-1984 (reprinted by Northwestern University Press, 2001). Bernstein is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Author page: epc.buffalo.edu. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 179 pages
• Publisher: Sun & Moon Press (September 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0940650797
• ISBN-13: 978-0940650794
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,152,150 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Charles Bernstein is the author of 40 books, ranging from large-scale collections of poetry and essays to pamphlets, libretti, translations, and collaborations. In March, 2010, Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux will publish All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems.. Recent full-lengtht works of poetry include Girly Man (University of Chicago Press, 2006), With Strings (University of Chicago Press, 2001), and Republics of Reality: 1975-1995 (Sun & Moon Press, 2000). He has published two books of essays and one essay/poem collection: My Way: Speeches and Poems (University of Chicago Press, 1999); A Poetics (Harvard University Press, 1992); Content's Dream: Essays 1975-1984 (Sun & Moon Press, 1986, 1994; reprinted by Northwestern University Press, 2001). Shadowtime (Green Integer, 2005) is the libretto he wrote for Brian Ferneyhough's opera and Blind Witness (Factory School, 2008) collects the libretti he wrote for Ben Yarmolinsky.

Bernstein is Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania.

He is the co-founder and co-editor, with Al Filreis, of PENNsound (writing.upenn.edu/pennsund); and editor, and co-founder, with Loss Pequenno Glazier, of The Electronic Poetry Center (epc.buffalo.edu). He is coeditor, with Hank Lazer, of Modern and Contemporary Poetics, a book series from the University of Alabama Press (1998 - ). He has been host and co-producer of LINEbreak and Close Listening, two radio poetry series.

With Bruce Andrews, he edited L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, which was anthologized as The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book (Southern Illinois University Press, 1984). Bernstein is editor of American Poetry after 1975 (a special issue of boundary 2, 2009), Louis Zukofsky: Selected Poems (Library of Amecrica, 2006), Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word (Oxford University Press, 1998);The Politics of Poetic Form: Poetry and Public Policy (Roof Books, 1990); 99 Poets/1999: An International Poetics Symposium, a special issue of boundary 2; and Live at the Ear (Elemenope Productions, 1994), an audio poetry anthology. He is the co-author of A Conversation with David Antin (Granary Books, 2002). Bernstein has edited two collections of poetry: "Language Sampler" in Paris Review, No. 86 (1982) and 43 Poets (1984) in Boundary 2 (1986).

From 1990 to 2003, he was David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters at the State University of New York at Buffalo and Director of the Poetics Program, which he co-founded, with Robert Creeely. In 2002, he was appointed SUNY Distinguished Professor (the university's highest rank). Bernstein has been writer-in-residence or visiting faculty at Columbia University, Princeton University, Brown University, Temple University, Bard College, the New School for Social Research, Queens College, and the University of California at San Diego and is an associate faculty member of the Transdisciplinary PhD Program on "Languages, Identities, and Globalization," Faculty of Arts & Sciences, University of Coimbra (Portugal).

Bernstein serves on the board of the Richard Foreman's Ontological Hysteric Theater, and is an editor of the Sao Paulo journal Sibila. He is on the advisory boards for Ubuweb, boundary 2, Chain, Ugly Duckling Presse, Futurepoem, Arizona Quarterly Review, and Foreign Literature Studies (Wuhan, China)

Anthology appearances include The Norton Anthology of Poetry; The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry; The Norton Anthology of Jewish American Literature; The Oxford Book of American Poetry; The Norton Introduction to Literature; The Norton Introduction to Poetry; Poems for the Millennium; From the Other Side of the Century: A New American Poetry 1960-1990; Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology; The Longman Anthology of Poetry: The Best American Poetry 1992, 2002, 2004, and 2008 ; Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present; Short Fuse: The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry: An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Form; The Body Electric: The Best Poetry from The American Poetry Review, 1972-1999; Language Poetries; In the American Tree; Up Late: American Poetry Since 1970.

Bernstein has written five librettos: Blind Witness News, The Subject: A Psychiatric Opera and The Lenny Paschen Show, with composer Ben Yarmolinsky, and Cafe Buffe, by Dean Drummond. Shadowtime, on the work of Walter Benjamin, was written for composer Brian Ferneyhough and premiered in May 2004 at the Munich Biennale; in 2004 it played at the Fesitival d'Automne in Paris and in 2005 at the Lincoln Center Festival. A CD was issued from NMC in 2006..

He has collaborated with Richard Tuttle on a poem/sculpture and an essay/poem on Tuttle's work, and collaborated with Susan Bee on several artists books. In 2002, he curated Poetry Plastique, with Jay Sanders, at the Marianne Boesky gallery and coedited the catalog.

Since the mid-1970s, Bernstein's poems and essays have been published in over 500 magazines and periodicals. His poetry and essays have appeared in translation, as well, in over one hundred anthologies and periodicals in Mexico, Argentina, Cuba, Brazil, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Russia, China, Korea, and Japan. Collections of his work have been translated into Spanish (poems from Xul Press, Buenos Aires and essays from Aldus, Mexico, forthcoming), Sweeden (OEI, 2008), Portuguese (Sao Paolo: Martins, 2008); Finnish (2006), and Chinese (forthcoming)..

Over 400 essays and reviews on his work have been published in TLS, PN Review, Critical Inquiry, The Nation, The American Book Review, The American Poetry Review, The Michigan Quarterly, Contemporary Literature, The Missouri Review, American Poetry, Jacket, MLN, Poetics Today, Harvard Book Review, and numerous other journals and books.

He has given about 500 readings and lectures/talks since 1975, throughout the world, including France, Finland, Denmark, Italy, Portugal, The Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Serbia, Spain, Canada, Cuba, Brazil, England, Sweden, Argentina, New Zealand, and the U.S.

In 2006, Bernstein was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Prizes include: The 1999 Roy Harvey Pearce / Archive for New Poetry Prize of the University of California, San Diego (established in 1995, the Pearce Prize is awarded biennially to an American poet-scholar in recognition of his or her distinguished lifetime contributions to poetry and literary scholarship); and, at Penn, the Dean's Award for Innovation in Teaching in 2005. Fellowships include: New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowship in 1995 and 1990, University of Auckland Foundation Fellowship (1986), the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1985), the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship (1980), and the William Lyon McKenzie King Fellowship (at Simon Fraser University) (1973).

From the early 70s to the late 80s, he worked as a writer/editor on healthcare and medical topics, with a break to serve as Associate Director of the CETA Artists Project (the largest postwar American public employment program for artists).

Charles Bernstein was born April 4, 1950 in New York City. He attended the Bronx High School of Science and Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1972. He is married to the painter Susan Bee and has two children Felix and Emma (1985-2008)..

For overview, see Logan Esdale, "Charles Bernstein" entry in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry (2005)

For more information go to http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein.

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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars poetry of concepts and not feeling, November 12, 2010

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Pietro "Pietro Da Cortona" (Pietro Da Cortona) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Sophist (Paperback)

bernstein is an interesting fellow. his poems show that he,in terms of theory and criticism, knows what he is talking about, perhaps more than other poets of his time and generation. he knows the (under)score more than most poets writing in america today. but i've read this and "all the whiskey in heaven." honestly, neither one is that interesting, even conceptually. the language he uses is often to get at the politics embedded in language itself. but this isn't enjoyable, and, frankly, there are better ways of doing this (say being a linguist or a politician, or a professor of rhetoric). i don't believe all art should be pleasing or disturbing, aesthetic. but his vocabulary comes from instruction manuals and soemtimes is arranged raNDomLy in TErms oF cASe or

linebre

aking.

it's just not that interesting. it wears its theory on its sleeve. and my problem is "why not just write theory?" its not very poetic. it is certainly "language-art," not as interesting as say the formalism of ron silliman or the plucky and humorous (yet still politcally informed and theory-conscious) poetry of rae armantrout. bernstein is a great spokesman for innovative poetics, but as a poet he just doesn't have sensibility and to go on pure intellect and politics alone makes for boring reading, boring thinking, even when he is trying to be coy.