Dark City

by Charles Bernstein

Offers a collection of poems which explore the many facets of contemporary life in Los Angeles.

Genres: Poetry

146 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1994

About the author

Charles Bernstein is an American poet, theorist, editor, and literary scholar. Bernstein holds the Donald T. Regan Chair in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is one of the most prominent members of the Language poets (or L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets). In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2005, Bernstein was awarded the Dean's Award for Innovation in Teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. He has also been a visiting professor at Columbia University, Brown University, and Princeton University.

Bernstein's highly anticipated new work, All the Whisky in Heaven, will be published in Spring 2010 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Also to be released in the upcoming year is a Companion to Charles Bernstein, which will be published by Salt Publishing, the winner of the prestigious 2008 Nielsen Innovation of the Year award.

Reviews

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 2 out of 5]

Charles Bernstein, Dark City (Sun and Moon Classics, 1994)

Charles Bernstein, erstwhile co-editor of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, one of the most influential poetry magazines ever to come out of New York, gives us his twentieth book. And a marvel of inconsistency it is. While there are a few flashes of brilliance, a great image here or there, a turn of phrase that demands re-reading, the majority of the book falls into the category of either "meaningless line breaks in the middle of words," "giving too much tot he reader," or "prose broken into lines to make it look like poetry." Amazon's review-posting conventions (you can't indent lines) make it impossible to give an example of the first. The second involves the repeated use of the annoying technique of slipping parentheticals in just to make sure you get the message, e.g.

"....So we dismember (disremember)
in homage to our maker, foraging
in fits..."
("Debris of Shock/Shock of Debris")

As for the third,

"....I
suspect that your father had an adrenal
gland tumor that was
driving his blood pressure
up...."
("Emotions of Normal People")

If there is any method to the madness of line construction here, I was unable to find it.

Simply put, not up to the standards one would expect from an industry giant. **

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this was the first book of "Language Poetry" I read, unless it was Perelman's "Virtual Reality." Life-changing.