Renaissance Society
at the University of Chicago
Cobb Hall, 4th floor
5811 South Ellis Avenue
Chicago IL 60637
773-702-8670
www.renaissancesociety.org
The Renaissance Society presents Charles Bernstein
Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature
University of Pennsylvania
Sunday, February 14, 2010, 2 pm
Highly esteemed poet, professor, and literary scholar Charles Bernstein will do a reading dedicated to his daughter Emma. The reading coincides with the release of All the Whiskey in Heaven, a “best of” Bernstein’s work from the past thirty years. Bernstein explores how language both limits and liberates thought, modulating the comic and the dark structural invention with buoyant soundplay. These challenging works give way to poems of lyric excess and striking emotional range. In addition, the reading will celebrate the recent release of Radical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture, a collection of essays in which poets and critics, Bernstein among them, address the question of what constitutes radical poetry written by Jews defined as 'secular', and whether or not there is a Jewish component or dimension to radical and modernist poetic practice in general. Their responses reflect a rich sense of how being Jewish influences their aesthetics and practices, and how the tradition of the avant-garde informs their identities as Jews. The reading will be followed by a discussion and reception.
For more information, please contact:
Mia Ruyter
Director of Marketing, The Renaissance Society
mruyter@uchicago.edu
The Renaissance Society
Current exhibition:
Allan Sekula: Polonia and Other Fables
through December 13, 2009
Please join our email list at
http://tinyurl.com/RSmailinglist
