Today, we release episode #142 in the PoemTalk Podcast Series, a very special episode on Charles Bernstein's early poem, "As If the Trees by Their Very Roots Had Hold of Us," recorded as part of a Kelly Writers House celebration of Bernstein's retirement from teaching last April. Host Al Filreis convened a panel that included (shown from left to right) Tracie Morris, Marjorie Perloff, and Danny Snelson, and Bernstein makes a cameo at the end, popping into the Wexler Studio to share a poem during the concluding Gathering Paradise segment.
As Filreis explains in his PoemTalk blog post on this episode, the poem "originally appeared in Senses of Responsibility (1979) and in 2010 was chosen by Bernstein to be included in All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems. We know the writing of the poem dates at least to 1977, which is when he performed it at a reading at the Place Center in New York (on December 18); he read that day with Kathy Acker." He continues, offering this preliminary summary of the program's discussion: "Our group observes that the poem is uncharacteristic, especially of writing in that early period with its intensely disruptive, disjunctive style at the level of the phrase. Yet the poem's satire — a mock of 'poet voice' and of the centrality of concepts like poetic 'presence' dominant in that era — looks forward to Bernstein's stance and tone of recent years." You can read more about the program, find the complete text of Bernstein's poem, read more about the Bernstein celebration, and listen to or watch video of this episode by clicking here. The full PoemTalk archives, spanning more than a decade, can be found here.
