Charles Bernstein - No hiding place

I thought language poetry was against emotion in the name of
sensation

I thought language poetry was against theory in favor of praxis

I thought language poetry was lots of words making the most of
meaning

I thought language poetry was the diehard foe of the massed mediocracy

I thought language poetry was a big tent without roof or floor

I thought language poetry was sympathy without tea

I thought language poetry was ambient sound in serial locomotion

I thought language poetry has branches in Paris, New York, Toronto,
and Palm Springs

I thought language poetry was Marxist

I thought language poetry was anarchist

I thought language poetry was the antichrist

I thought language poetry was bourgeois aestheticism

I thought language poetry hated the voice

I thought language poetry was all voicing and never content

I thought language poetry was against realism

I thought language poetry was a new form of realism

I thought language poetry was against dogma

I thought language poetry refused its commissars

I thought language poetry was against closed groups

I thought language poetry was all thought in pursuit of potential
action

I thought language poetry was Gertrude Stein all over again

I thought language poetry was trying to make the reader feel
smart

I thought language poetry was wary of proclamations of sincere
expression

I thought language poetry was a lot of nonsense packaged to look
important

I thought language poetry was the possibility for freedom

I thought language poetry was the major precursor to word-salad
email spam

I thought language poetry was short for L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry

I thought language poetry favored style over manner

I thought language poetry was too intellectual

I thought language poetry was too difficult to ignore

I thought language poetry was the cat’s scratch

I thought language poetry was neither a school nor a movement
but a transient moment

I thought language poetry was a chimerical constellation

I thought language poetry was tendencies and investments not
rules or orders

I thought language poetry was minor literature with a vengeance

I thought language poetry was a collective figment of a collective
imagination

I thought language poetry was an illusion

I thought language poetry was over

I thought language poetry resists the authority of language poetry

* * *