By the Book: Charles Bernstein and Craig Dworkin in conversation

Archive of our April 29 By the Book virtual event, in celebration of National Poetry Month, Charles Bernstein, author of 'Topsy-Turvy' and Craig Dworkin, author of 'Radium of the Word.'

ABOUT THE BOOK: In his most expansive and unruly collection to date, the acclaimed poet Charles Bernstein gathers poems, both tiny and grand, that speak to a world turned upside down. Our time of “covidity,” as Bernstein calls it in one of the book’s most poignantly disarming works, is characterized in equal measure by the turbulence of both the body politic and the individual. Likewise, in 'Topsy-Turvy,' novel and traditional forms jostle against one another: horoscopes, shanties, and elegies rub up against gags, pastorals, and feints; translations, songs, screenplays, and slapstick tangle deftly with commentaries, conundrums, psalms, and prayers.

With fresh insight and contemporary relevance, 'Radium of the Word' argues that a study of the form of language yields meanings otherwise inaccessible through ordinary reading strategies. Attending to the forms of words rather than to their denotations, Craig Dworkin traces hidden networks across the surface of texts, examining how typography, and even individual letters and marks of punctuation, can reveal patterns that are significant without being symbolic—fully meaningful without communicating any preordained message.

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