Near/Miss

Charles Bernstein

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780226570693, 9780226570723
• eBook ISBN: 9780226571195
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

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. 
 

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 wi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• 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