ARTIST STATEMENT
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
