Charles Bernstein Critical Essay | Critical Review by Andrew Osborn

Critical Review by Andrew Osborn

SOURCE: “Charles Bernstein,” in Chicago Review, Vol. 45, Nos. 3-4, Summer-Fall, 1999, pp. 173-77.

In the following review of My Way, Osborn praises Bernstein's innovative approach to contemporary poetry, but asserts that some of his critical pieces lack depth and substantiation.

Since the late 1970s, Charles Bernstein has been one of America’s most vocal advocates of alternatives to what he problematically calls “official verse culture.” A cofounder of the brief-lived journal that gave its name to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writing and, as of a decade ago, the holder of Robert Creeley’s former chair at SUNY-Buffalo, he has written some twenty books of poetry but is better known, I think rightly, for his several collections and editions of critical and theoretical writing. In the first of these, Content’s Dream (Sun & Moon, 1986), he articulated his skepticism about the centrality of voice and persona in contemporary discussions of poetry. Drawing upon a strong...
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