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Imagine poetry as a series of terraces, some vast, some no bigger than a pinprick, overlooking the city of language.

The sound and light show begins in the dark: sentences dart by, one by one, forming wave after wave of the rag and boneshop of the quotidian, events passing before our eyes like the faint glimmer of consciousness in an alcoholic stupor.

Facts, facts everywhere but not a drop to drink

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Work in Progress all work and no play makes jack a dull boy ALL WORK and NO play makes Jack a DULL boy ALL work and NO play MAKES jack a DULL boy all work and no play makes jack a dull boy ALL WORK and NO play makes Jack a DULL boy ALL work and NO play MAKES jack a DULL boy all work and no play makes jack a dull boy ALL WORK and NO play makes Jack a DULL boy ALL work and NO play MAKES jack a DULL boy all work and no play makes jack a dull boy ALL WORK and NO play makes Jack a DULL boy ALL work and NO play MAKES jack a DULL boy all work and no play makes jack a dull boy ALL WORK and NO play makes Jack a DULL boy ALL work and NO play MAKES jack a DULL boy all work and no play makes jack a dull boy ALL WORK and NO play makes Jack a DULL boy ALL work and NO play MAKES jack a DULL boy all work and no play makes jack a dull boy ALL WORK and NO play makes Jack a DULL boy ALL work and no play

Conceptual poetry is poetry pregnant with thought.

Connect the knots.

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E P=O=E=T=R=Y: a loose affiliation of unlike individuals.

The poet is a liar.

The poet is a lyre.

The poet’s tired.

In the 1990s, it was common in Russia to find stores with empty shelves, but one was stripped to bare walls.

It was a shelf store.

The time is not far off, or maybe it has already come to pass, when computers will be able to write better poems than we can. So we must now add to logopoeia, phanopoeia, and melopoeia: algorhythmia.

Computers will never replace poets because computers won’t take that much abuse.

Speak truth to truth.

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Richard Tuttle & Ch. Bernstein With Strings

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In May 2006 I published Kenneth Goldsmith’s The Weather by Charles Bernstein For this work I included the entire text of Goldsmith’s book, which each of the work’s four seasons in a different color and progressively smaller font.

Compare and contrast the two works: Is my work:

A) More original than Goldsmith’s? B) A work of conceptual poetry? C) A Language Poem? C) A parody? D) An homage? E) A bright, shining light in the world of poetry? F) A fake?

If you answered YES to all six questions: Leave the conference immediately. Get some fresh air.

In the world of the imagination, impossible just means the next opportunity to get real.

The author dies. The author’s work is born.

I love originality so much that I keep copying it.

I am the derivative product of an originality that spawns me as it spurns me.

I love originality so much that I keep copying it. The work of art “itself” does not exist only incommensurable social contexts through which it emerges and into which it vanishes.

I love originality so much that I keep copying it. Existence needs essence the way a walking tour needs local color.

Good poets make analogies, great poets make analogies between analogies.

A poem should not be but become.

Which reminds me of the story of the man who reports a wife- beating to a neighbor. "Then stop beating her," the neighbor replies. “But it's not my wife!,” replies the good Samaritan, becoming agitated. "That's even worse!" says his neighbor.

The absence of conception had itself to be conceived.