Academy of American Poets
View Cart | Log In 
Subscribe | More Info 
Find a Poet or Poem
Advanced Search >
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Charles Bernstein
Charles Bernstein
Charles Bernstein was born in New York City in 1950. He received...
More >
Want more poems?
Subscribe to our
Poem-A-Day emails.
FURTHER READING
Poems about the Mind and Thinking
Experiment in Divination: Voice and Character
by Rebecca Wolff
Intention to Escape from Him
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
It was a hard thing to undo this knot
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Man Carrying Thing
by Wallace Stevens
Museum Guard
by David Hernandez
Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow
by Robert Duncan
Panels for the Walls
by Cedar Sigo
Tang
by Bruce Cohen
The Needle
by Jennifer Grotz
Why I Am Not a Painter
by Frank O'Hara
Sponsor a Poet Page | Add to Notebook | Email to Friend | Print

Why I Am Not a Buddhist

 
by Charles Bernstein

Reality cons me as it spur(n)s me.
This is the road to eternal
Consanguinity, eloping with
Hope and leaving me to pick
Up the proverbial bag.
But that's the argument for.
About this poem:

"I have a companion poem in The Sophist (1987) called 'Why I Am Not a Christian' (taking my title from Bertrand Russell’s book of the same name), which has two lines echoed in this poem: 'You always throw it down/ but you never pick it up?' Then in Girly Man (2007) I have a poem from 1988 called 'Why I Don’t Meditate': 'Mental health is probably overrated—a little anxiety/ is a great source/ for poetic composition & besides I prefer sitting/ on chairs with heavy cushions & a footstool/ if at all possible'—a poem both sophistical and sincere (a favorite combination).

My concern is more What is false? than What is truth?

All true poetry comes from deep fear, immobility, timidity. (I love Walter Benjamin’s essay on Hölderlin’s timidity.) This is our common ground, our temporal consanguinity (blood ties).

Reality is not kind.

I’d tell you in an instant, if I could."


—Charles Bernstein






Copyright © 2013 by Charles Bernstein. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on June 25, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
Larger TypeLarger Type | Home | Help | Contact Us | Privacy Policy Copyright © 1997 - 2013 by Academy of American Poets.