A conversation with Charles Bernstein

The following interview of Charles Bernstein by David Caplan was conducted by telephone on February 4, 2003, and revised via e-mail. Because Mr. Bernstein presented an excerpt from a larger project at the MLA, he and Mr. Caplan determined that an interview would be more useful in The Antioch Review than a small part of a work-in-progress.

Caplan: It strikes me that innovation is often mentioned in discussions of poetic form, but in really slippery ways. When you say that you are interested in "innovative poets," what do you mean?

Bernstein: I'm curious about the values we ...