The Kinds of Poetry I Want: Essays & Comedies

A celebration of the radical poetics of invention from Charles Bernstein.

For more than four decades, Charles Bernstein has been at the forefront of experimental poetry, ever reaching for a radical poetics that defies schools, periods, and cultural institutions. The Kinds of Poetry I Want is a celebration of invention and includes not only poetry but also essays on aesthetics and literary studies, interviews with other poets, autobiographical sketches, and more.

At once a dialogic novel, long poem, and grand opera, The Kinds of Poetry I Want arrives amid renewed attacks on humanistic expression. In his polemical, humorous style, Bernstein faces these challenges head-on and affirms the enduring vitality and attraction of poetry, poetics, and literary criticism.

Charles Bernstein is the Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of many books, most recently, two volumes of poetry, Near/Miss and ­­­­Topsy-Turvy, also published by the University of Chicago Press.