Two or Three Things I Know About Charles Bernstein

Through a reading of Charles Bernstein's poetry and a closer analysis of his libretto, Shadowtime, this essay argues that Bernstein fully inhabits two possibilities for contemporary American Jewish poetry—one that eschews mourning and one that embraces it; one that rejects a romantic tradition of interiority and one that has made its peace with it. It shows that he also posits a third possibility, which is perhaps an extension of the first, a poetry that goes beyond melancholy, to what Gillian Rose called an inaugurated mourning for the European Jewish past.