Near/Miss

By Charles Bernstein

Praised in recent years as a “calculating, improvisatory, essential poet” by Daisy Fried in the New York Times, and as “the foremost poet-critic of our time” by Craig Dworkin, Charles Bernstein is a leading voice in American poetry. Near/Miss, Bernstein’s first poetry collection  in five years, is the apotheosis of his late style, thick with off-center rhythms, hilarious riffs, and verbal extravagance.

This collection’s title highlights poetry’s ability to graze reality without killing it, and at the same time implies that the poems themselves are wounded by the grief of loss. The book opens with a rollicking satire of difficult poetry—proudly declaring itself “a totally inaccessible poem”—and moves on to the stuff of contrarian pop culture and political cynicism—full of malaprops, mondegreens, nonsequiturs, translations of translations, sardonically vandalized signs, and a hilarious yet sinister feed of blog comments. At the same time, political protest also rubs up against epic collage, through poems exploring the unexpected intimacies and continuities of “our united fates.” These poems engage with works by contemporary painters—including Amy Sillman, Rackstraw Downes, and Etel Adnan—and echo translations of poets ranging from Catullus and Virgil to Goethe, Cruz e Souza, and Kandinsky.

Grounded in a politics of multiplicity and dissent, and replete with both sharp edges and subtle intimacies, Near/Miss is full of close encounters of every kind. 
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Release date: Oct 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9780226571195

Charles Bernstein

CHARLES BERNSTEIN is author of Pitch of Poetry and All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems. He is the Donald T. Regan professor of english and comparative literature at the University of Pennsylvania.

Book preview

Near/Miss

Near/Miss

Charles Bernstein

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago and London

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

© 2018 by Charles Bernstein.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 East 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637.

Published 2018

Printed in the United States of America

27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18    1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-57072-3 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-57069-3 (paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-57119-5 (e-book)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226571195.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bernstein, Charles, 1950– author.

Title: Near/miss / Charles Bernstein.

Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2018.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018002466 | ISBN 9780226570723 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226570693 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226571195 (e-book)

Classification: LCC PS3552.E7327 N437 2018 | DDC 811/.54—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018002466

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Contents

Thank You for Saying You’re Welcome

In Utopia

High Tide at Race Point

Don’t Tell Me about the Tide . . .

Grief Haunts the Spoken

Nowhere Is Just around the Corner

S’i’ fosse

Corrections

Intaglio

The Bluebird of Happiness

Catachresis My Love

Spring

Otherwise He’d Be Dead

This Poem Is a Hostage

The Lie of Art

Why I Am Not a Hippie

Apoplexy / Apoplexie

Truly Unexceptional

Passing

All Poetry Is Loco

I Used to Be a Plastic Bottle

Why I Am Not an Atheist

The Island of Lost Song

Confederate Battle Flag

Sacred Hate

Me and My Pharaoh . . .

Catullus 70

He Said He Was a Professor

Klang

Autobiography of an Ex-

Why I Am Not a Buddhist

Ballad Laid Bare by Its Devices (Even)

Animation

Also Rises the Sun

Georgics

Concentration (An Elegy)

How I Became Prehuman

Pinky’s Rule

My Mommy Is Lost

Better Off Dead

Oopera

Procedure

Water Under the Bridge . . .

Recap

Unconstrained Writing

Ugly Duckling

Beyond Compare

The Pond Off Pamet Road

The Nun’s Story

Our United Fates

To Gonzalo Rojas

I Don’t Remember

Flag

Contact Western Union Very Urgent

Her Ecstasy Is Abstract

At Sunset, after the Plum Blossoms Begin to Fall . . .

Each Separate Dying Ember

Betcha

Don’t Say I Passed When I Die

Ring Song

God’s Silence

Drambuie

Doggone Sane

Fado

Wild Turning

This Poem Is a Decoy

My Luck

Mystic Brokerage

Effigy

Seldom Splendor

Song of the Wandering Poet

In the Meantime

Before Time

Song

What Makes a Poem a Poem?

There’s a Hole in My Pocket

Song Dynasty

Elfking

Lacrimae Rerum

Fare Thee Well

Notes and Acknowledgments

Near/Miss

Thank You for Saying You’re Welcome

Un bateau frêle comme un papillon de mai.

This is a totally

inaccessible poem.

Each word,

phrase &

line

has been de-

signed to puz-

zle you, its

read-

er, & to

test whether

you’re intel-

lect-

ual enough—

well-read or dis-

cern-

ing e-

nough—to ful-

ly appreciate th-

is

poem. This poem

has been written

for an audience of

poets, poets

who know the dif-

ference be-

tween the

simple past

tense & ‘has

been’—the pres-

ent per-

fect tense

—&

who also rec-

ognize the pos-

sible aesthetic

effect of that dif-

ference—poets

who also know

that ‘has been’ has

another meaning

even though that

other meaning is

not relevant to

this poem. This

poem

is un-

necessarily com-

plicated,

flailing wild-

ly, like an

opium addict looking

vainly for its

pipe, at a

demo-

nstrably deranged

a-

version of the necessary

in quest of

the im-

probable (necessity

is to this

poem what mar-

garine is to marzi-

pan).

This

poem cries

out for an audience

that is able

to savor

the use of

a

sing-

le quo-

tation mark

where

less sens-

i-

tive read-

ers would

fail to see

why double

quotes were-

n’t used &

might

even be so fool-

ish to think

that using sin-

gle quotes was

a mis-

take or pre-

tenti-

ous. This

poem has been

written not for

just any other

poets

but for

those

special ones

capable

of appreciating the

nu-

ances &

tricks, pros-

oody &

infrastruct-

ures (or

their

ab-

sence) in

this poem. This

poem

fancies poetry

as an ei-

detic

emanation

so rare & so

refined

that it will

e-

lude

even the m-

ost elite

readers, which

almost certain-

ly

does not

(& will

never)

in-

clude

you.

Its

attitude

toward you

as a

g-

eneral reader

is that

you’d

be better off

watching BBC news

or listen-

ing

to NPR human-

interest program-

ming

or, anyway,

stick-

ing to

the laur-

e-

ates. This

poem

appeals to

a small co-

ter-

ie of those

in the k-

now

by making

in-group references

that will leave you

scratch-

ing your

head (if your hand

ever

frees it-

self from scratch-

ing your

ass). This

poem is laced—

as tea is

laced

with arsenic

but also as

lace is made in

Chantilly—

with coded winks

to béret-clad

cogno-

scenti,

sly references

such as

the fact that

the title

of this poem

refers to another

poem,

which is n-

ever

referenced

in this poem,

or not

referenced in

a way the

broad public would be

hip en-

ough to be

hip to—(

dig it?)

—

so, heh!,

if

you’re not

hip to

that oth-

er poem

you will be

as out to sea

with this

poem as

the proverb-

ial organ grind-

er who

lost his monkey—

not in the great

storm raging (al-

ways rag-

ing) out-

side, but in

the