Charles Bernstein Recants

TUCSON, May 31 — Charles Bernstein, best known as the co-editor of the influential 1970s journal L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E and a prime proponent of the poetry movement by same name publicly renounced many of the positions that he had abided by over the past three decades.
Bernstein, who has a volume of Selected Poems forthcoming from a major New York trade publisher, appeared before a crowd of several hundred at the Conceptual Poetry conference at the University of Arizona Thursday afternoon and admitted his mistakes in the form of a lengthy poem, "Recantorium (a bachelor machine, after Duchamp after Kafka)."
Mr. Bernstein backed away from his negative opinion of what he has termed "official verse culture," saying that these poets do, in fact, "represent the best and the finest, the most profound and significant, the richest and most rewarding, poetry of our nation."
Mr. Bernstein, who once held the opinion that only elitist and obscure poetry should be praised, now claims that "only poets working in solitude and individually can produce poems of enduring value" and has embraced "a poetry without limits of time or place, a poetry universal address and true to the timeless human spirit." In addition, he now advocates that "clearly written expository prose, with a delineated argument including a beginning, middle, and end, is the only guarantor of Rational Mind."