Charles Bernstein

Strike because the sky turns gray just before it blacks out. Strike because when you were little your father told you too many lies. Strike because the surf is up. Strike because you are heartsick with the old ways and giddy with promise. Strike because things can’t go on ...

Imagine that all the nationally circulated magazines and all the trade presses and all the university presses in the United States stopped publishing or reviewing poetry. New poetry in the United States would hardly feel the blow. But not because contemporary poetry is marginal ...

Press the key you wish to define now. Later, outside, you can say the slosh is softer this year, or mercy loops its own trail, mucking through the triumphant pillars of mastery—moment’s solace, forfeiture’s plenitude. I’d wave my hand maybe four or five times before ...