Pope Leo XIV, Shared Worlds, Visions
And poems by Charles Bernstein!
(Apologies for being a day late with this week’s Poet in Mexico—Katherine thought maybe it was the full moon—maybe it was but for a day or so even typing was off the radar; someone suggested to me that possibly Wednesday would be a better day for posting anyhow, right in the middle of the week—your thoughts?).
Imagine my surprise to see a Mets fan in the Vatican crowd, awaiting white smoke and the announcement of the new Pope. One more sign how small the world can (happily) be.
Sometimes the news from abroad, that is to say the US, can be mind-boggling. The hideous mini-me fascist Stephen Miller wants to suspend habeas corpus? The mayor of Newark is arrested by ICE for peacefully protesting a facility in the city of which he is mayor? Buy corrupto coin and you get dinner with the con man at the White House? And a tour if you pay even more? And the Qataris are giving away airplanes, no strings attached?
Oh boy.
There’s a new Pope! Pope Leo XIV. A first it seemed he was a gringo! And he is. Kind of. He’s also Creole on his mother’s side. And he has a fair number of Jews in his family tree! A Pope for all people, for all seasons.
He’s from the south side of Chicago. A White Sox fan (poor guy). Who promises, in different ways, to follow in the path of Pope Francis. Who wanted to follow in the path of St Francis. Like me, el papa Leon holds two passports. His are US and Peru. Mine the US and Mexico. Will he get a third from the Vatican? (The Vatican does issue passports). If you want to know? Yes, it does mean something to be a citizen of more than one country. It’s one step closer to being a citizen of the world.
And! A crazy cool thing? The most important American in the world is no longer the president of the United States. The current president— a convicted felon and sex offender who bankrupted six companies—including a casino, do you know how incompetent you have to be to bankrupt a casino?—and is trying to bankrupt the US—has to take a backseat. This American Pope—who may be Pope for a couple of decades or so—has a certain kind of moral and spiritual authority that can’t be bought with memes and crypto and bullshit. I’m Jewish and the Pope isn’t (mostly obviously but it is in his family tree) but I sense our relationships with a higher power is something Trump won’t ever understand.
But Trump’s spiritual issues aren’t my responsibility. What is? One thing I’m feeling responsible about is Poet in Mexico. I really enjoy writing with you. Your responses have been incredible. Part of me thinks that what I’m doing is explaining this beautiful and complex country for my friends north of this south. Part of me knows it’s almost impossible. Can anyone really explain the US? Why should I think I can explain Mexico?
I can’t. So what can I do? Explore. Think out loud. Wonder.
Feel blessed I have two passports?
In a future Poet in Mexico, I’m going to talk about a lot of the misconceptions folks have about Mexico. But for this post, I want to think about a different question. It’s one that has constantly been posed to me by the poetic country of my friend Charles Bernstein.
I need to start by saying that Charles and I are not very close friends, at least in the way I am with some of the other poets whose work I have posted and will post in Poet in Mexico. Life works that way. Yet whenever we have gotten together, it has been with great pleasure and our conversations have moved me the way those with my good friends usually do. Charles is great to talk with, smart and, frankly, a good deal of fun. We have a lot in common and I suspect that were we neighbors I’d get much less work done. Because we would talk. A lot. And that would enrich and ruin my (work) day.
That he is one of our most honored US poets—his Bollingen prize in 2019 was a huge yes in a certain southern Mexican home—you’d never know. He wears himself on his sleeve, not his prizes.
And this: the thing Charles did for me once that possibly changed me as a poet? In the mid-1980’s, I was co-hosting a reading series at the Cable Gallery in SoHo (NYC). We were trying to match people with other people that might seem unexpected. I barely knew Charles and I wrote him, asked him to be a part and did he have any thoughts on people to include? Part of who Charles is? His generosity. He responded immediately to this (then) younger poet. We wrote back and forth a little. He suggested readers, he read in the series. And then I sent him some poems.
That was where his sharp sense of poetry came to me. He wrote me and said (basically), hey I like your work, you’re pretty good but have you paid attention? And he wrote me the first word of every line of every poem I’d sent him. Imagine. He wrote out each word. Line by line. They were all weak words, wasted words, useless words.
Have you paid attention?
Have you paid attention?
Have you paid attention?
The best advice I could ever receive. In poetry. In life.
Pay attention.
When I read the poems of Charles Bernstein, I pay attention. With Charles, with every poet worth our time, we enter another country. And that’s what I’m thinking about for this Poet in Mexico: No poet writes in English (or Spanish or French or Italian or German or whatever). They write in a language and from a place that resembles languages we think we speak and worlds we think we know but are wholly their own.
That is how I know how to read Charles. He writes in a language called Charles Bernstein from a place called Charles Bernstein. Of course I know what an alter kaker is, I know (most) of his literary references, but then I need to stop. I know? I think I know. I think I do and then I realize I don’t. And it’s time to read again.
After that? Then I re-enter this world. The world from which I’m writing now. And I see it differently. I think (hope) I’m a little smarter and think (hope) a better person. Not that that’s the point, but it is (usually) what wonderful poetry does for me.
With pleasure and with gratitude, here are some poems from my friend, Charles Bernstein, from a manuscript in progress. Welcome to his country. ¡Gracias Carlos!
With Susan Howe at Joan Jonas opening at Gladstone Gallery, NY. Photo by R.H. Quaytman
Charles Bernstein Four Poems from Dodging Being and Nothingness First the Rabbi, then Cantor, then synagogue president stand before the Torah ark on Yom Kippur and profess, with piercing cries echoing the Shofar, that they –– each one –– is "nothing" in the face of the Almighty. The worshippers surrounding them in the vast temple weep and moan, awed by the pious self-abnegation of their exalted leaders. After a few moments, the poet-errant, standing in a dank corner of the schul reserved for those who have not purchased High Holy Days tickets, murmurs, loud enough to be heard by the entire assembly, “I am nobody!,” "I am no one!” “I am nothing!" ––The alter kaker shouts back –– “What a schmuck! To have the chutzpah to claim to be nothing!" Commentary: The poet-errant faced the congregation and defiantly proclaimed, “I am somebody! I am!” The alter kaker replied, soto voce, “What chutzpah for this nobody to say they’re somebody!” [Norman Fischer] Commentary: “Praised be thou, NoOne. / For your sake we / want to flower. / Toward / you. // A Nothing // we were, we are, we will // remain, flowering: // the Nothing-, the // NoOnesRose. [Paul Celan, from “Psalm,” tr. Piere Joris] [for Norman Finkelstein] Refrain soldier friend’s soldier foe dies by other’s grave in each fatigue pocket inter- changeable vertigo a nut and the word prairie [after Dominique Fourcade] Mirror speech divents the condition Della me a present, a sow guard O verse ill telos, ma, verso the originale, chow, say – see – propagate a intransitive, distance Nancy toggles solo ill cantata Sue toggles, parla D.C. come'd in a form of protection guard an "O" in centro divento I lose no me in tandem say I'll centro a natural man to vote, O O me speech O! lo! desired passeth a cool Louis say non-perjured I'll deteriorate leg o' Nelly, Sue, mescal and perch, dove I'll snare, oh, renounce I a lot, vouch, I'll pass odor I'll name hypothesis not finger [After Nanni Cagnone's "SEE FIGURE" in What's Hecuba to Him or He to Hecuba? (New York: Out of London Press, 1975), p. 110: “specchio diventa la condizione della mia presenza” à “mirror becomes the condition of my presence.”] Final Solution We will stamp out antisemitism by eliminating its cause: the Jews who control our universities and medical research –– promoting liberal arts and vaccines.
Charles Bernstein.
Good Links from Charles, José, Nanci and some friends
Recommended readings for Charles Bernstein:
The Kinds of Poetry I Want: Essays & Comedies (University of Chicago Press, 2024)
Topsy-Turvy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021)
The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Letters: Selected 1970s Correspondence of Bruce Andrews, Ron Silliman, and Charles Bernstein, edited by Matthew Hofer and Michael Golston (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2019)
Charles Bernstein: The Poetry of Idiomatic Insistences, ed. Paul Bove (Duke University Press / boundary 2, Fall 2021
The Course, with Ted Greenwald (New York; Roof Books, 2020)
José Alfedo Jiménez, Tu y las nubes, from the film La fiera, 1956
There’s a debate about the greatest of the composers of rancheras. I’m certainly no expert, but to my mind, José Alfredo Jiménez (1926-1973), who composed over 1000 songs, many in the genre, is certainly on the short list.
Nanci Griffith (with Emmy Lou Harris and Nina Gerber), Across the Great Divide, from Other Voices, Other Rooms (1993)
This video of Kate Wolf’s Across the Great Divide is not the greatest quality—and if someone knows a better one please let me know—it’s such a lovely song though about the countries we can occupy and the musicians are incredible.
A pleasure to have these poems in "A Poet in Mexico"! And I appreciate the introduction.