Product Description

A long overdue collection of critical writing on Oppen's substantial legacy.

Customer Reviews (2)

don't listen to dummy man
look how angry te fool above me got that's why you should read chuck-also he's funny 'nuff said

Again, THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES!
Once again, reading Charles Bernstein is a wasted intellectual exercise. Berbstein's theories about language are old hat, too. Jackson MacLow and many others beat him out for originality long ago. It is a pity to see that people like Marjorie Perloff, coming from the "Gertrude Stein School," so to speak, can be so fooled by Berstein's nonsense. He wastes paper with his over done, old hat experiments. Stein beat him to the things he attempts, too, and in a more interesting whimsical fashion. If one really wants to read about language and its implications, one does better to read Noam Chomsky. The thing is that Chomsky at least never pretends to be a poet, and at best, tops Bernstein for true intellectual power. Charles Bernstein would do well to attempt to really communicate some experience of life on THIS planet, not just his bookish attitudes. His claim to any originality is arrogant. We poets were all doing these sort of experiments all through the 1960's and 1970's before we decided to really write in order to communicate. Gertrude Stein and Jackson MacLow were our leaders, along with the French Dadaists and Symbolists, like Rimbaud. American poetry simply does not need Bernstein's influence or theories at this juncture. He sets things back, not forward. This silly emperor really has not clothes and it doesn't take a child to see it. We grown up poets know it two. And, we must tell the truth from the rooftops to save other younger poets from this foolery with l-a-n-g-u-a-g-e. ... Read more

Product Description
The author, Charles Bernstein, is a Hollywood composer who has written music for countless movies and television films. In this book, he goes beyond the world of film music to explore how the creative process works in our culture. The writing is accessible, easy to read, often witty, and should appeal to anyone interested in creativity, films, music, or just a good read.

Some questions considered in this book: What is inspiration? Where does music come from? Can music heal? What is originality? Can limitations free us? What can silence teach us? Why do melodies haunt us? The topics of the chapters are wide ranging, covering such diverse subjects as architecture, food, fashion, love, magic, psychology, religion and medicine. But the underlying themes are common to all of us—music, life, spirit and the struggles faced by all creative people.

This book is, as the title says, about Film Music…And Everything Else. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Highly recommended
Disregard my last review - this is actually one of my favorite books on film music.It is an easy read, however, Bernstein makes many fantastic points.It is witty and funny, and doesn't lose my interest.The chapters are short, and while I'd love for him to get more in depth on some topics, I still felt like I got something out of each chapter.Highly recommended!

Inspiration and Understanding
This is a warm, witty and useful book for creators of all disciplines--especially those who attempt tomine, refine and sell the products of their soul. It's the type of book you read in the middle of the night when the ideas won't come and you're wondering just why in the hell you became an artist in the first place. By dawn,you'll know why, and who knows? you might evenfeel good enough to catch alittle sleep before you start in all over again.

'Film Music and Everything Else' is Something Else
As a professional songwriter I am always searching for that edge, that extra something that will set my songs apart from the rest. I feel blessed whenever I can lay my hands and heart on something that will inspire me and help me grow as a writer. Coming across this rare gem of a book was nothing short of a godsend.A quick peek at the table of contents reveals the coming feast. The author seems well versed in a cornucopia of interesting and diverse topics; from chapter one's ideas on creativity, through fashion, food,jazz, and finally closing with a sweet chapter on community. Mr. Bernstein seems to possess not only the knowledge and skill necessary to thrive in the intense and sometimes cut-throat film music world but seems to also be in touch with some sort of philosophers stone. His wit, wisdom and insights are a constant joy throughout the book. It appears he can make music out of anything and after reading his lovely book, I feel as if I have just experienced one of his compositions live in concert. This really is a book for anyone interested in an artist's take on life, love, and creation. I heartily recommend it. Bruce Michael Miller Nashville, TN

'Film Music and Everything Else' is Something Else
As a professional songwriter I am always searching for that edge, that extra something that will set my songs apart from the rest. I feel blessed whenever I can lay my hands and heart on something that will inspire me and help me grow as a writer. Coming across this rare gem of a book was nothing short of a godsend.A quick peek at the table of contents reveals the coming feast. The author seems well versed in a cornucopia of interesting and diverse topics; from chapter one's ideas on creativity, through fashion, food,jazz, and finally closing with a sweet chapter on community. Mr. Bernstein seems to possess not only the knowledge and skill necessary to thrive in the intense and sometimes cut-throat film music world but seems to also be in touch with some sort of philosophers stone. His wit, wisdom and insights are a constant joy throughout the book. It appears he can make music out of anything and after reading his lovely book, I feel as if I have just experienced one of his compositions live in concert. This really is a book for anyone interested in an artist's take on life, love, and creation. I heartily recommend it. Bruce Michael Miller Nashville, TN ... Read more

Product Description
"A Conversation with David Antin" is a four-month e-mail exchange between the poet/essayist Charles Bernstein and artist/poet/critic David Antin. Ideas on art, poetry, performance, and the life of one of the most singular thinkers in America are discussed. The combination of the speed of electronic transmission and the rigors of writing as opposed to talking, made it, in Antin's words, "a cross between the 18th-century and the 21st." This book presents the entirety of their dialogue, wholly uncut, and is an essential document about a man whose thought and writing has helped define the avant-garde for nearly half a century.

A collaboration between David Antin and Charles Bernstein.
10 b&w.
4.5 x 6.75 in. ... Read more

Product Description
The key book by the internationally celebrated poet with the only "Polish ghetto-Hassidic-cowboy and Indian American comic voice" (Robert Duncan) in history.

if only our eyes were wild enough
to see them our hearts to know their terror
—Jerome Rothenberg

For the last half of the twentieth century into the new millennium, no other American poet has been as deeply engaged in the opening of the poem (its boundaries and its possibilities) than Jerome Rothenberg. As editor, translator, essayist, performer, groundbreaking anthologist, one of the founding figures of enthnopoetics, and most significantly, as poet, Rothenberg has remapped the art against the grain of a single "great tradition."

Reminiscent of H.D.'s Trilogy, Triptych assembles three long serial poems into one multilayered sacred text. Like Kafka's Amerika, Calvino's Euphemia, and Babel's Odessa, Rothenberg's Poland in Poland/1931, first published in 1974, is a "poland stuffed with poland / brought in the imagination." Fifteen years later, Poland materializes into Khurbn (a Yiddish word meaning destruction, holocaust, human disaster), a poem summoned from the author's visit to his ancestral town, Ostrow-Mazowiecka, and the confrontation with his family's annihilation—including an uncle who killed himself—during World War II. "Allowing my uncle's khurbn to speak through me..." the author writes, "the poems are the clearest message I have ever gotten about why I write poetry." And now in 2006, The Burning Babe rises out of the furnace of khurbn, "reaching through the ruins / for a place to soar".... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not up to Sun and Moon's usual standard.
Charles Bernstein, Dark City (Sun and Moon Classics, 1994)

Charles Bernstein, erstwhile co-editor of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, one of the most influential poetry magazines ever to come out of New York, gives us his twentieth book. And a marvel of inconsistency it is. While there are a few flashes of brilliance, a great image here or there, a turn of phrase that demands re-reading, the majority of the bookfalls into the category of either "meaningless line breaks in the middle of words," "giving too much tot he reader," or "prose broken into lines to make it look like poetry." Amazon's review-posting conventions (you can't indent lines) make it impossible to give an example of the first. The second involves the repeated use of the annoying technique of slipping parentheticals in just to make sure you get the message, e.g.

"....So we dismember (disremember)
in homage to our maker, foraging
in fits..."
("Debris of Shock/Shock of Debris")

As for the third,

"....I
suspect that your father had an adrenal
gland tumor that was
driving his blood pressure
up...."
("Emotions of Normal People")

If there is any method to the madness of line construction here, I was unable to find it.

Simply put, not up to the standards one would expect from an industry giant. ** ... Read more

Product Description
Poetry. "In the poems of CONTROLLING INTERESTS Bernstein continually reveals his desire for the concomitance of the individual and the world, of all language and experience . This book is one of the most original and imaginative in American lyric verse"--Douglas Messerli. "Bernstein presents the reader with a world in which the articulation of an individual language is all but prevented by the official discourses that bombard the consciousness from all sides . He [is] on to something important"--Marjorie Perloff. "It is writing of absolute necessity, demanding not to be appreciated, but understood"--Ron Silliman. ... Read more

Product Description
Revised and updated, this second instalment in the 'Inflammatory Bowel Disease Yearbook' series includes recent data and new topics relating to this important area of medicine. This title provides clinicians and scientists with state-of-the-art updates on hot topics relevant to clinical practice and IBD research. Chapters on the relationship between nutrition therapy, cancer, and bone disease and IBD provide deeper insights into the broader issues affecting this increasing public health problem. ... Read more

Product Description
Poetry. " As the book's title implies, ISLETS/IRRITATIONS is frustrated with personal isolation-but also irritated with 'eyelets,' or any tight limits imposed from the outside. Bernstein attempts to create an inclusive and universal space by transcribing the transpersonal and instantaneous chunks of matter. that surround us in contemporary human society every day. A remarkable and demanding poet, associated with a tendency that may be the foundation for a major change in the way we write and read poetry"-Kenneth Funsten, Los Angeles Times Book Review. ... Read more

Product Description
This work features a new set of topics for the fourth edition of the "Inflammatory Bowel Disease Yearbook" series. Continuing the IBD update from previous volumes, this state of the art annual is essential reading for anyone with an interest in current issues in IBD, as well as specialist clinicians, or researchers in the field. ... Read more