Islets / Irritations

Islets / Irritations is a pivotal work in Bernstein's development. I/I moves from the socially grounded preoccupations of "Controlling Interests" (Roof, 1980) to a more idiosyncratic address. I/I encompasses a great range of poetic styles--at times comic, a times parodic, I/I is, a work of and about turbulence--personal, poetic and social. Henry Sayre says in the "Columbia Literary History of the United States", "What Bernstein's poetry is about, at base, is the anxiety we all share about the production of meaning, the promise of reference that somehow gets lost in the saying."