The Sophist

by Charles Bernstein, Ron Silliman (Introduction)

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.

Genres: Poetry

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

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

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A range of poetic pieces, from a poem made up for three-line stanzas compiled from Word Frequencies in Spoken American English by Hartvig Dahl ("I and The", pg. 59), to a play that takes as its characters Liubov Popova, Jenny Lind, and John Milton ("Entitlement", pg. 19). And everything in-between...

Milton
For still she prospects, yet mopes and sprawls
A crystalline confusion to confer these Stalls,
Which I not willing, stored
What could I, a piece of chalk, but scribble
In determined fright, or stand enmazed?

Popova
Yet by force of space delineated
made nets to catch a fall
themselves that trapped us.

Lind
Batty as the day is thronged, loops
Eyelids like a sabre from its sheath
Moaning like an apple fraught with frost.

Popova
And turning spin, and spinning die.
- Entitlement (pg. 25)


[...]
That is, in prose you start out with the world
and find the words to match; in poetry you start
with the words and find the world in them.[...]
- Dysraphism (pg. 49)


I and the
to that you
it of a

know was uh
in but is
this me about

just don't my
what I'm like
or have so

it's not think
be with he
well do for

on because really
as at if
when had all
[...]
- I and The (pg. 59)


E
U
a peg on which to hang D
O
X
U
S
the orderliness of letters a gloom of shellac
of the gravity of the fog

"There are some solid facts that are indisputable."
- The order of... (pg. 85)


[...]
A heart as big
as a sewer and a
brain as big as -
but comparisons
are innocuous &
the first lie
replicates itself
in an isolated
word. Judge
less you not
be judged
& the word slip
by unknown
you to it
it to you.
[...]
- Foreign Body Sensation (pg. 85)


[...]
From the Ministry of Psychological Science:
Normal minds never run adrift when there are no environmental factors to poison them. Exposure to big businessmen, right-to-life Christians, military officers, career managers, and New York Times cultural editors causes otherwise healthy young people to become perverts. These types, motivated by greed for money and power and authority belong to the lower human strata. They are classed as moral imbeciles. They are all, or most of them, antisocials with a pronounced defective aesthetic sense. It is not uncommon, however, to find them brilliant and nimble witted. But they are plausible and ready liars. They lie even when the truth might be more serviceable. Lifestyles that would arouse horror and repugnance in normal personas are sought after by such individuals. People of this type resent being spoken to courteously; they want to be addressed roughly. Even among those classed as intelligent, they derive actual gratification in exposing their ignorance to one another. Many have anesthetic consciences - pricks with needles cause no pain. Orgasms can only be achieved by this type of pervert by enacting or fantasizing racist, sexist, ageist, or authoritarian acts. Having once been an unwilling witness to conversation between two such individuals, I can say it is the most disgusting, absolutely the most nauseating, spectacle one cane imagine.
[...]
- Amblyopia (pg. 114)


[...]
Many people have trouble with everyday
activities, such as speaking, thinking,
responding, dreaming, eating, sleeping. A crutch
shares the weight of burden, protecting
without shielding, but should not be used
without specific instructions.
[...]
- Amblyopia (pg. 114)


[...]
Where are the blue sputter of
yesteryear? "Sometimes
I think I hear
a mosquito but it turns out to be the
Refrigerator." "It's not so
bad once you get used
to it." [...]
- Safe Methods of Business (pg. 134)


[...]For instance,
according to Boston
magazine, Oliver Wendell
Holmes once
called the city "the hub
of the solar system".
[...]
- Safe Methods of Business (pg. 135)


is like a
is a
its
one has a conception
looks
wants somehow
stares at
that it
some kind of
who is not
allowing for
that they be there
everything one must
it's a very
- A Person Is Not an Entity Symbolic but the Divine Incarnation, 15 (pg. 152)


"Are you happy, Jack?"
- A Person Is Not an Entity Symbolic but the Divine Incarnation, 16 (pg. 152)

On a side not, Bernstein overtly attacks Allen Ginsberg's dictum "first though, best thought" in one of his poems, making clear the departure of the L=A=N=G+U+A+G+E poets from the Beat poets who preceded them...

[...]
One want almost to shudder (yawn, laugh . . . ) in disbelief
at the hierarchization of consciousness in such a dictum
as "first thought, best thought"m as if recovery
were to be prohibited from the kingdom;
for anyway "first thought" is no thinking
at all. There is no 'actual space of'. So
quiet you can hear the clouds gather.[...]
- The Simply (pg. 13)