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Topsy-Turvy
022678360X pdf 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 books 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. Though Bernsteins poems play with form, they incorporate a melancholy, even tragic, sensibility. This cognitive dissidence, as Bernstein calls it, is reflected in a lyrically explosive mix of pathos, comedy, and wit, though the reader is kept guessing which is which at almost every turn. Read more