Bernstein Named to Poetry Committee of Mla

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Charles Bernstein, David Gray Chair of Poetry and Letters at the University at Buffalo, has been elected to the Executive Committee of the Poetry Division of the Modern Language Association of America (MLA).

Founded in 1883, the MLA provides opportunities for its members to share their scholarly findings and teaching experiences with colleagues and to discuss trends in the academy. Members work to strengthen the study and teaching of language and literature, and sustain one of the finest publishing programs in the humanities.

An award-winning poet and essayist, Bernstein recently edited "Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word," which will be published this month by Oxford University Press.

"Close Listening" features 17 essays on the reading, sounds and visual performance of poetry. It explores new avenues for the critical discussion of the sound and performance of poetry and gives special attention to innovative work.

Another Bernstein book, "My Way: Speeches and Poems," will be published by The University of Chicago Press next winter.

Bernstein is the author of more than 20 volumes of poetry and critical essays. His writings have been widely anthologized, translated and examined in scores of critical reviews published worldwide.

In 1995, he received an Artists' Fellowship from the New York State Foundation for the Arts. He also has received grants from such sources as the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

A Phi Beta Kappa philosophy graduate of Harvard College and later a William Lyon McKenzie King Fellow at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Bernstein has been a writer in residence or visiting faculty member at Princeton University, Brown University, Temple University, the New School for Social Research, Queens College and the University of California at San Diego.

He lives in Amherst.