Poet Bernstein Wraps up Visiting Writer Series

MILWAUKEE -- Poet Charles Bernstein, who is considered one of America's liveliest advocates and practitioners of radically inventive poetry, will read from his works on Wednesday, April 24, on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus.

The reading begins at 7:30 p.m. in room 175 of Curtin Hall, 3243 N. Downer Ave. Bernstein is the author of 20 books of poetry, including "With Strings," "Republics of Reality: Poems 1975-1995," "Dark City," "Rough Trade," "The Sophist," "Islets/Irritations," and "Controlling Interests." He has published three books of essays, "A Poetics," "Content's Dream: Essays 1975-1984," and "My Way," and is also host and co-producer of LINEbreak, a radio poetry series.

He edited L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E with Bruce Andrews, and is the executive editor and cofounder of The Electronic Poetry Center. He has received numerous awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Bernstein teaches at the State University of New York at Buffalo where he is the David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters and director of The Poetics Program there.

Publisher's Weekly, in reviewing "Republics of Reality," which includes his out-of-print chapbooks, said, "At once the most paradoxically controversial and popular, accessible and most difficult of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, Bernstein is also the writer of that group who strove early on to experiment with the extremes of its newly minted methods..."

"Charles Bernstein is one of the finest poets writing today, and certainly one of our greatest satirists," says Critic Marjorie Perloff. "His poetry presents a profound and highly individual critique of contemporary half-truths, speech forms, and modes of expression, and does it so graphically and with such great good humor that the reader is left breathless, laughing and crying at the same time as the shocks of recognition register."

Bernstein's appearance concludes the spring visiting writers series at UWM, hosted by the school's Creative Writing Program and co-sponsored by the English Department and the College of Letters and Science. The event is free and open to the public. For more information contact Steve Tighe at UWM, 229-6991 or 964-5582, or e-mail mailto:sptighe@uwm.edu.

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