(Photo by Cecilia Gronberg)
If poets are said to be “painters with words,” then Charles Bernstein would surely moonlight working in a custom frame shop. With samples lining the walls—from the gaudiest fake-gold scrollwork to the most austere black lacquer finish—I imagine him testing the clients’ nerves by frantically holding every outlandish sample to the edge of their pictures to assess the overall effect. A cheap clip-frame for a museum’s masterpiece, gilded silver leaf for a baby’s doodle, exotic wood for a crappy poster won at a carnival. His is a poetics of framing and re-framing, with a guarantee: if you end up liking it, he’ll quickly try something else, for free…
Thus starts the preamble to BOMB magazine’s interview with Charles Bernstein, in which he discusses how he conceptualized his volume of selected poems, All the Whiskey in Heaven.
CHARLES BERNSTEIN
When: Friday, October 26, 2012, at 3:00 p.m.
Cost: Free (open to the public)
Where: J.A. de Sève Cinema, J.W. McConnell (LB) Building (1400 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W.), Sir George Williams Campus
Writers Read: Concordia university's reading Series 