My Way_ Speeches and Poems - Charles Bernstein

~rouisionallnstitutions
Alternative Presses and Poetic Innovation
In our period, they say there is free speech.
They say there is no penalty for poets,
There is no penalty for writing poems.
They say this. This is the penalty.
Muriel Rukeyser, "In Our TIme",
in The Speed of Darkness
Imagine that all the nationally circulated magazines and all the trade
presses in the United States stopped publishing or reviewing poetry. New
poetry in the United States would hardly feel the blow. But not because
contemporary poetry is marginal to the culture. Quite the contrary, it is
these publishing institutions that have made themselves marginal to our
cultural life in poetry. As it is, the poetry publishing and reviewing practices
of these major media institutions do a disselVice to new poetry by
their sins of commission as much as omission-that is, pretending to cover
what they actually cover up; as if you could bury poetry alive. In consistently
acknowledging only the blandest of contemporary verse practices,
these institutions prOVide the perfect alibi for their evasion of poetry; for
if what is published and reviewed by these institutions is the best that poetry
has to offer, then, indeed, there would be little reason to attend to
poetry, except for those looking for a last remnant of a genteel society
verse, where, for example, the editor of The New York Times Book Review can
swoon over watered-down Dante on her way to late-night suppers with
wealthy lovers of the idea of verse, as she gushed in an article last spring.!
Poetry, reduced to souvenirs of what was once supposed to be prestige
goods, quickly gets sliced for overaccessorizing, at least if the stuff actually
talks back in ways we haven't heard before. If poetry has largely dis-
1. Rebecca Pepper Sinkler, "Hell Night at the 92nd Street Y", New York TImes Book Review, May
9, 1993, p. 31. "For some" ("We lucky few" is the last phrase of the article) "there was to be a postpoetry
spread laid on by Edwin Cohen (a businessman and patron of literature) back at his apartment
at the Dakota, a Danteesque menu announced in advance: roast suckling stuffed pig stuffed
with fruit, nuts, and cheese; Tuscan salami; prosciutto and polenta, white beans with fennel."
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