Read more
"'Topsy-Turvy' is Charles Bernstein's most capaciously unruly collection to date, gathering disparate poems, both tiny and grand, that speak directly to our time of 'covidity, ' as he calls it one of the book's most poignantly disarming works. He charts in equal measure the turbulence of both the body politic and the individual. Novel and traditional forms jostle against one another: horoscopes, shanties, and elegies rub up against gags, pastorals, and feints; homophonic translations, songs, screenplays, and slapstick tangle deftly with commentaries, conundrums, psalms, and prayers. There is even an ode to the New York subway and a memorial for Harpers Ferry hero Shields Green, along with collaborations with artists Amy Sillman and Richard Tuttle. 'Topsy-Turvy' is also full of other voices: Pessoa, Geeshie Wiley, Ráeuckert, and Rimbaud; and Drummond, Virgil, Ferneyhough, and Caudio Amberian; and even an imaginary first-century aphorist. Bernstein's 'cognitive dissidence' is a lyrically explosive mix of pathos, comedy, and wit, though the reader is kept guessing which is which at almost every turn. Bernstein didn't set out to write a book about the pandemic, but these poems, performances, and translations are oddly prescient, marking a path through dark times with a politically engaged form of aesthetic resistance."--
About the author
Charles Bernstein, winner of the 2019 Bollingen Prize, is the Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of many books, most recently two volumes of poetry,
Near/Miss and
Topsy-Turvy, also published by the University of Chicago Press. He is the winner of the 2025 America Award of the Contemporary Arts Educational Project, for a lifetime contribution to international writing.
Summary
Charles Bernstein presents an original and capacious collection of poems that speak to a world turned upside-down by this time of “covidity.”
