Come Out Tonight: Selected Works of Steven Jesse Bernstein

by Steven "Jesse" Bernstein, Dennis R. White (Introduction), Larry Reid (Editor)

Steven Jesse Bernstein was born December 4, 1950, in Los Angeles, California. On October 22, 1991, he took his own life on the Makah Indian Reservation near Neah Bay, Washington. The brutal facts of Bernstein's life, his struggles, his addictions, living with mental illness, and the ultimate act of ending his life, shouldn't been seen as tragic, nor should they be romanticized. It's doubtful Jesse, as the protagonist of his own story, would see it either way. It's more likely that Jesse would have made art where others saw disaster. Creating art out of disaster is what Jesse did best.

The horrors of addiction and a cycle of self-medication to ward off mental illness were crucial to his work. More importantly, they were only a small part of Jesse's depth of experience. This collection of Steven Jesse Bernstein's poetry marks 2021 as the 30th anniversary of his death.
(From the introduction by Dennis R. White)

Genres: Poetry

132 pages, Paperback

Published July 1, 2021

Reviews

[Simone · Rating 5 out of 5]

if jimmy recommends you a book you say okay jimmy yes jimmy right away and you read it and its amazing and it blows you away every time

[Peter Landau · Rating 5 out of 5]

The unheard music of Seattle. Grunge poetry? Nah, but there’s grit in them there poems that you won’t be able to get out of your head.