[Wgcp-whc] This Friday--Charles Bernstein

Richard Deming richard.deming at yale.edu
Mon Feb 24 12:45:21 EST 2014


Dear Friends,

 

Last Friday, the WGCP met for our first discussion of Charles Bernstein—primarily his latest collection of poems, Recalculating.  The poet will be joining us this Friday (Feb 28th in room 116 of the Whitney Humanities Center from 3 PM- 5 PM) for our second session devoted to that work.  From the conversation, we have arrived at a series of questions that I will circulate to you and will be sending to the poet as well.  These will be prompts for our upcoming session, which will ideally be an organic discussion about the work and about Bernstein’s poetics. 

 

Professor Bernstein will be giving a lecture to the English Department.  The talk is entitled “The Pitch of Poetry,” which we can detect a gesture to his undergraduate advisor, the philosopher Stanley Cavell.

In light of the influence that Cavell has had on Bernstein, WGCP member Leslie Meyers offered this as a useful primer for understanding Cavell. http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/faculty/files/conant/Stanley%20Cavell%27s%20Wittgenstein%20page%20proofs.pdf

 Also useful would be Bernstein’s audio interview with Cavell from a year or so ago.


http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/groups/Close-Listening/Cavell-Stanley_Close-Listening_12-10-12.mp3

 

 Conant is one of Cavell’s most devoted students and most persuasive advocates.


I will also offer this link via which one can buy a digital copy of Bernstein’s senior essay: a reading of Gertrude Stein through by way of Wittgenstein. https://jacket2.org/commentary/three-compositions-philosophy-and-literature-1972

 

 

Below are the questions.  And just a reminder, the WGCP is open to all and so do feel free to invite any interested parties.

 And before closing—we bring word of a new book by WGCP sustaining member Laura Manuelidis.  This terrific collection of poems entitled One/Divided by Zero is out andd available here:


http://www.amazon.com/One-divided-zero-laura-manuelidis/dp/1484158296/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393263569&sr=8-1&keywords=laura+manuelidis

 

Brava, Laura!

 Cheers,


Richard Deming, Group Coordinator

 

+++

 

Questions for Yale Poetics Seminar—

Friday, February 28, 2014 WHC room 116 # PM – 5 PM

 

 

--Translation in various forms seems important to your thinking and to your poetic practice.  Could you discuss your interest in it as a practice and as a more general trope for your understanding of language?  Why did you include translations in Recalculating? In your mind, how do those texts interact with the poems? What is the task of the translator?  What is the task of the poet?

 

--How has your sense of language and poetry evolved over your career?  There are consistent points of reference, but has your understanding of these changed? Do you see your poetry now attempting things it had not in the past?  Has your sense of your poetry and poetics changed after you put together your Selected Poems a few years ago?

 

--In what way do you consider an audience or a reader in regards to your work? Obviously, you don’t write to please a reader, but how do you conceive of an ideal reader?  What sort of contract exists between a reader and an author (and a text)?

 

--Could you describe the process of writing the title poem?  How long did you work on this?  How do you think of its architecture?  What guides its compositional choices? Was this poem typical of your process?  Why did you choose to make it the title poem?

 

--Would you see your poems or your poetics in conversation within a Talmudic tradition?

 

--Could you describe the process of assembling the entire collection?  How did you shape it?  Since it draws from work

 

--Arguably, the landscape of poetry has changed fundamentally over the last (at least 20 years). How would you characterize its changes?  How would you characterize your role or at least how do you think about your place (or involvement) in that change? Do you have a sense of where you see poetry going?  Do you have a sense of where you see the institutions and social formations that arise around poetry going?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/wgcp-whc/attachments/20140224/82f48cff/attachment-0001.html 


More information about the Wgcp-whc mailing list