SOURCE: “Midnight at the Oasis: Performing Poetry inside the Spectacle,” in Modernism/Modernity, Vol. 6, No. 1, January, 1999, pp. 153-62.

In the following excerpted review, Tuma examines Bernstein's assertions in Close Listening concerning the aural and performative aspects of poetry and the function of public poetry readings.

In his introduction to Close Listening, Charles Bernstein argues.

In an age of spectacle and high drama, the anti-expressivist poetry reading stands out as an oasis of low technology that is among the least spectaclized events in our public culture. … In contrast to theater, where the visual spectacle creates a perceived distance separating viewers from viewed, the emphasis on sound in the poetry reading has the opposite effect—it physically connects the speaker and listener, moving to overcome the self-consciousness of the performance context. Indeed, the anti-expressivist mode of reading works to defeat the theatricality of the performance situation, to allow the listener...