This Working Title Will Be Replaced: Charles Bernstein's Forever Forthcoming

Abstract

Focusing on two key themes, or vectors, of Charles Bernstein's latest book of poetry, Topsy-Turvy, that of brokenness and the various references to “God” or religious belief, this review argues that there is a new metaphysical dimension in Bernstein's recent poetry that moves beyond his poetry's earlier emphases on the purely interpersonal and material nature of language and its uses. Through a discussion of Bernstein's concept of the never-attained “virtual” in his essay “Poetics of the Americas” and philosopher Gilles Deleuze's concept of the “virtual,” I argue that we can discern something like a “transcendental” aspect in Bernstein's poetry and philosophy, but not one that points to a God, a realm of ideals, or toward a telos, but something that exists now—a very real, but not yet actual, potential. As opposed to the merely “possible,” this potentiality allows for the truly novel to appear, either in poetry or the world itself.