READINGS

[Oration]

RECANTORIUM
By Charles Bernstein, from his Recantorium (a bachelor machine, after Duchamp after Kafka), delivered May 31 at the University of Arizona and published in the Winter issue of Critical Inquiry. Bernsteins most recent book is Blind Witness: Three American Operas. His poem Pompeii appeared in the August issue of Harpers Magazine.

, Charles, son of the late Joseph Herman, later known as Herman Joseph, and Shirley K., later known as Sherry, New Yorker, aged fty-eight years, arraigned personally before this Esteemed Body, and kneeling before you, Most Eminent and Reverend Readers, Inquisitors-General against heretical depravity throughout the entire Poetry Commonwealth, having before my eyes and touching with my hands the Books of the Accessible Poets, swear that I have always believed, do believe, and by your help will in the future believe, all that is held, preached, taught, and expressed by the Books of the Accessible Poets. I was wrong, I apologize, I recant. I altogether abandon the false opinion that National Poetry Month is not good for poetry and for poets. I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid error and apostasy. And I now freely and openly attest to the virtues of National Poetry Month in throwing a national spotlight on poetry, so crucial to keeping verse alive in the twenty-rst century. I was wrong, I apologize and recant. I altogether abandon the false opinion that only elitist and ob-

was wrong, I apologize, I recant. I altogether abandon and renounce the false opinion that poetry is a social and ideological construction and not the expression of the Pure Feeling of the Poet (PFP) and declare, The Sovereign Human Self (SHS) is the sole origin of authentic expression and meaning. In full recognition and

scure poetry should be praised. I abjure, curse, detest, and renounce the aforesaid error and aversion. And I now freely and openly attest that the best way to get general readers to start to read poetry is to present them with broadly appealing work, with strong emotional content and a clear narrative line. I was wrong, I apologize, I recant. I altogether abandon the false opinion that, to raise the prole for poetry, events involving celebrities reading poems, such as the one each year that is the centerpiece of National Poetry Month, are not as valuable as events presenting poets reading their own work. I acknowledge and regret my error. Poets would turn off the large and wealthy audience of arts patrons. Like the retarded or crippled stepchildren in fairy tales, it is for the best to have the poets stay in the back room during the party, lest they frighten the guests. I was wrong, I apologize, I recant. I altogether reject, abjure, and denounce the sarcasm that just now has undercut the sincerity of my confession. My comments about poets as retarded or crippled stepchildren are offensive. I abase and prostrate myself in humbly and sincerely asking your forgiveness and the forgiveness of all those who seek, above all, sincerity and authenticity in poetry.

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acknowledgment of my error, I hereby declare and swear, to all present company, that I must not hold, defend, or teach in any way whatsoever, verbally or in writing, the said false doctrine. I was wrong, I apologize, I recant. I altogether abandon the false opinion that ofcial verse culture, through prestigious prizes awarded for merit and reviews in nationally circulated publications selected for major importance, and including the appointments of the poets laureate, does not represent the best and the nest, the most profound and signicant, the richest and most rewarding, poetry of our nation. And now that I myself, in my person and through my work, have ascended into this Exalted Company, and joined the rareed

[Poem]

MAMA

By Jesse Patrick Ferguson, from a selection of visual poems, edited by Geof Huth, in the November issue of Poetry. The author of ve poetry chapbooks, Ferguson is a poetry editor of The Fiddlehead.

and incorrigible company of ofcial verse culture, I do here cast stones and sticks and call an abomination and curse and scorn and repudiate any who would not cherish and adore both the process and product of that ofcial verse culture that has embraced, with trepidation and embarrassment, and with noses tightly pinched and earmuffs in place, my unworthy ascent. I was wrong, I apologize, I recant. I altogether and totally, completely and thoroughly, without reservation, quibble, or question, and with newly faithful heart, abandon the false doctrine that meandering, digressive, or paratactic prose, prose that fails to state clearly its meaning, sentences that get caught up in their own rhythms and sounds and cadences, nuances and nooks, rather than in getting to the point or meat or heart of the matter or meaning or substance, as I say, I abandon and renounce the false doctrine that crooked and bent prose can have any value for truthful discourse or accurate representation. I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid error and aversion and the many related errors and aversions that ow inevitably as a consequence of the aforesaid error and aversion, as a baby inevitably ows from its mother or an ocean from its rivers or a false conclusion from a flawed premise or a disease from a virus or death from repeated blows with a blunt instrument or gorging from a starving child given food. Clearly written expository prose, with a delineated argument including a beginning, middle, and end, is the only guarantor of Rational Mind. I was wrong, I apologize and recant. I altogether abandon the false doctrine that ambiguity and irony are anything more than sophistry. I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid error and apostasy, which I have lapsed into again and again, like a habitual drinker seeking his five oclock martini, or an erotomaniac seeking nonprocreative sexual experiences, or a worker idling on the job, or a habitual truant passing notes in class. I am with regret lld and by errors oerwhelmed, having chosen the broken path over the righteous, the warped over the erect. I cant and recant. I altogether abandon the false doctrine that poets can remain radical while working as academics. After it had been notied to me that

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HARPERS MAGAZINE / JANUARY 2009

the said doctrine was contrary to the Books of the Accessible Poets, I wrote and published works in which I discuss this new doctrine already condemned, and adduce arguments of great cogency in its favor, without presenting any negation of these, and for this reason I have been vehemently and justly rebuked. I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid error and aversion. Academic employment is the mark of a compromised poet who has sold out. Radical poets prove their authenticity through poverty.

am with regret filld and by errors oerwhelmed, having chosen the broken path over the righteous, the warped over the erect. I cant and recant. I altogether abandon the false opinion that advocacy or partisan positioning has any place in poetry and poetics. Poetry and poetics should be reserved for those who look beyond the contentions of the present into the eternal verities, the truths beyond this world that never change, as represented in the Books of the Accessible Poets. I further stipulate that I recant, categorically, that poetry is an activity of the intellect and herewith and hereby declare and proclaim that true poetry is an affair of the heart and only the heart. I was wrong, I apologize, I recant. Like the black sheep who strays too far from the adoring ock, or like the drunk with a pale green beret who, deep into the night, and desperate for one more absinthe before closing time, babbles uncontrollably to the deaf and crippled barkeep, I embraced an elitism that puts me out of touch with the sentiments, feelings, convictions, beliefs, preferences, perspectives, and dyspepsia of everyday, ordinary, run-of-the-mill people, the Johns and Joans and Janes and Jills, the Billys and Bobs, the Shirleys and Toms, the Frans and Fritzes, Millys and Moes, not only thinking I was better than John and Joe, Mary and Harry, but that their sentiments, feelings, convictions, beliefs, preferences, perspectives, and dyspepsia did not matter. I spent my time hunting for thoughts rather than hunting quail. My solipsism overcame me, so that I wrote, and professed for others to write, words that communicated to no one, that meant nothing, that defied the laws of

meaning and the fundamentals of grammar; praisingover and above clear sense and good syntaxthe incoherent, the nonsensical, the aberrant, the foolish, the deformed, the contradictory, the awkward, the frivolous, the ungainly, the self-indulgent, the infantile, the stubborn, the phony and fake, the prevaricating, the disorderly. In my promiscuous dalliance with affect rather than emotion, I cast my lot with the excessively cerebral and the cerebrally excessive. I recant this cant. Now I stand before you to repudiate and abjure, to cast away and revile, this stiff-necked arrogance in order to dedicate myself to the freedom in right thinking.

[Poem]

ORIGINS OF POETRY

By Joel Lipman, from a longer work, in the November issue of Poetry. Lipman is professor of art and English at the University of Toledo. His books include The Real Ideal and Ransom Notes.

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written onto me as I merge with it, yet I cannot comprehend it, even as it apprehends me. For yet, you have already seen, my errors abound around me, and I, I am engulfd by them, as an harpooned whale is overcome by the very waters that had buoyed him. I am in anxiety and in sorrow, for my wrongs known and unknown. For I have, here, now, in this very moment, done badly and wrongly with the hypocrisy, the bad faith, of this recantation, which reects pride and arrogance, ippancy, sarcasm, resentment, hyperbole, and a fundamentally false analogy, and I regret, already as my mouth speaks the words, my unsupportable and offensive identications, in placing myself, even if only imaginatively or rhetorically or didactically, even if only parodically or satirically or ironically, in the position of poets and writers and artists and scientists in the past who confronted most cruel, most terrible, and most violent sanctions for their work, for their thinking, and for their discoveries, but also poets and writers and artists and scientists in the present, now, in this moment, as we speak and as we listen, here and in other places, at home and abroad, who daily and even hourly confront most violent, most terrible, and most uivering with tiny, rapid oscillations, cruel sanctions for their work, for their thinkthese recantations are inscribed upon the bed ing, and for their discoveries, while I am at of my thought, as a harrow incises the ground leisure, relatively free of erce and wounding before the seeds are planted. My sentence is reprisals and may cant and recant, recant and cant, for the most part, at my own discretion. So, verily, I have fallen into error deep, an error I cannot ironize or satirize or joke my way out of, and I have a queasy feeling [Poem] of unease in my regret, for I realize I am making a mistake, these words are all out of proportion and grotesquely exaggerated in suggesting an equivalence of violent politiBy Rae Armantrout, in Fence: 20. Armantrouts collection Versed will be published next month by Wesleyan Universical repression with often minor and ty Press. petty, silly and stupid, ignorant and harmless, doctrines, beliefs, and sentiments, or, indeed, sometimes AMERICA perfectly reasonable views and perThe playboy scion of a weapons company repents. His spectives, with which I have had company, he sees now, is corrupt, his weapons being cause to quarrel, and whose only sold (behind his back) to strong men. Alone, he builds a crime is my disagreement, fomented super weapon in the shape of a man. Now, more powerful by an increasingly inexcusable and and more innocent than ever before, he attacks. unjustified crankiness, ungratefulness, and belligerence, abetted by a HAPPENING morbid fascination with the strucThe train halts. An engineer tells us were stopped because ture of such disciplining machines, weve lost touch with the outside world. Things perfected by a series of reigns of terare happening ahead, but we dont know what they are. ror, from all of which I have been This could represent an act of war. We stand in a eld, spared (or else such exercises as this no longer passengers. would be impossible, since it is my freedom, however relative and circumscribed, that both lets me

I was wrong, I apologize, I recant. Like a rat seeking a dark cavity to eat its hapless prey, I succumbed to the dictatorship of relativism, a state of profound confusion in which I could not recognize anything as denitive and based my judgments solely on my own ego and desires. In this graceless state, I falsely believed that the real tyranny was intolerance to those who do not adhere to the aesthetic values of honesty, coherence, clarity, and truth as revealed to all with a moral conviction and a commitment to the timeless human story. I repudiate this gutless indulgence toward benighted and fallen ideas and commit myself to the dictatorship of obedience. I was in error, I apologize, I recant. I altogether abandon the false doctrine of midrashic antinomianism and bent studies, which I have promulgated in writings, lectures, and teaching, with its base and cowardly insistence on ethical, dialogic, and situational values rather than xed and immutable moral laws. I loved language more than truth, discourse more than reality, and so allowed to spread, in myself and in others, an intellectual virus that uproots the plain sense of the word.

PREVIEWS

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HARPERS MAGAZINE / JANUARY 2009

COURTESY THE ARTIST AND WINSTON WACHTER FINE ART, SEATTLE AND NEW YORK CITY

Bauhaus, by Peter Waite, was exhibited last spring at Winston Wchter Fine Art, in Seattle.

compose this and is the measure of its failure). For after all is done and said, after the fury and the sound, after the pomp and bombast and self-regard, after the myopia and insufferably inappropriate and unjustied delusions of persecution, this recantation enacts a false and offensive analogy to woefully pernicious, lifedestroying belief systems, states, or religions. And for this I recant my cant, cant and recant, I am wrong, I have strayed from the path of decency, restraint, and honor. Therefore, desiring to remove from the minds of your Eminences, and of all faithful Poets and Poetry Readers, this vehement suspicion, justly conceived against me, with sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and aversions, and generally every other error, apostasy, and sect whatsoever contrary to the said Books of the Accessible Poets, and I swear that in the future I will never again say or assert, verbally or in writing, anything that might furnish occasion for a similar suspicion regarding me; but that should I know any dissenter, or person suspect-

ed of dissent, I will denounce him to the Inquisitor of the place where I may be and also to the Inquisitor that is in me, that I have become. Further, I swear and promise to fulfill and observe in their integrity all penances that have been, or that shall be, imposed upon me. And, in the event of my contravening any of these promises and oaths, I submit myself to all the pains and penalties imposed and promulgated in the canons and other constitutions, general and particular, against such delinquents as myself. I, the said Charles Bernstein, have abjured, sworn, promised, and bound myself as above; and in witness of the truth thereof I have with my own hand subscribed the present document of my abjuration and abjection, and recited it word for word at Tucson, formally S-cuk Son, at the base of the Black Mountain, in the long shadow of Baboquivari, in the County of Pima, State of Arizona, on the border of Estados Unidos Mexicanos, on the Last Day of May, in the year Two Thousand and Eight of the current era.

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