i keep charles bernstein alive

the topical index: found poetry, stolen ideas

i keep charles bernstein alive
on my google reader, breathing
in and out, in part a labor of sympathy,
but mostly, oh hell, consternation at someone
living well from such a thing as poetry.

and tending to its sustenance
and tending to its well-being

so he blogged about
(how round that is on the tongue:
goose fat, chocolate globules)
so he blogged about

The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 4th edition.
(and tending to its sustenance
and tending to its well-being)

seal with a ball,
he made a point:

"The index alone is worth the price of admission.
Here is “F” from the topical index (available on-line):

fancy
fatras
feigning
figura
figuration
fili
flyting
folia
foot
formalism
formula
fourteener
fractal verse
fragment
Frankfurt school
frottola and barzelletta
furor poeticus"

scratching for its sustenance
snickering behind the hand at the sadness of its well-being

so i thought -- all sibilant -- i can do that, too,
and maybe with a square on my seal nose
(so long as you under-inflate the geometry),

and so i give you a salacious sample from segment S:

Sachsenhausen
Sajmiste
Salaspils
Skrochowitz
Sobibor

no wait no wait i always get these things
confused, encyclopedic poetry
and fizz in your mouth nazi
camps!

 (who takes their poetry encyclopedic?
who?)

what i meant to say, in the spirit of sustenance,
in pursuit of our collective well-being, was this:

"Sanskrit poetics
Sanskrit poetry
Scotland, poetry of
Scottish Gaelic poetry.
Sephardic poetry.
Serbian poetry
Siamese poetry.
Sindhi poetry.
Sinhalese poetry.
Slavic poetics.
Slovakia, poetry of
Slovenian poetry
Somali poetry
South Africa, poetry of
South America, poetry of.
Spain, poetry of
Spanish America, poetry of
Spanish prosody"

*hat tip to C. Bernstein's 22 January 2013 entry at Jacket2


Author notes

"Found poetry" both irritates and titillates me, because I once lived with The Next Great American Novelist, and all that he could do was shush me so as to better overhear what the person at the next table was saying... which was all good until the game began when we got home to his fine, big desk -- a find at the San Francisco landfill, refinished and taking up half of "our" living room -- and his leaky fountain pen (snicker!). Then began the "elevated" or "ridiculized" perversion of the act of creation, always, somehow, making fun of those folks who had just been trying to chat and share a good meal.  Occasionally, Charles Bernstein brings on that same feeling.  [This is the space that ought to be dedicated to a humble homage making much mention of my extreme admiration for Charles Bernstein]

credit: Vince Gotera: The Man with the
Blue Guitar --
Erasure Poetry

© 2013 L. Ryan