Alan Bernheimer Explained

Alan Bernheimer (born 1948 in New York City) is an American poet, often associated with the San Francisco Language poets and the New York School poets.^[1]

Biography

He attended Horace Mann School, and graduated in 1970 from Yale College, where he became friends with poets Steve Benson, Kit Robinson, Rodger Kamenetz, and Alex Smith and studied literature with A. Bartlett Giamatti and Harold Bloom and poetry with Ted Berrigan, Peter Schjeldahl, and Bill Berkson. He was a member of Manuscript Society in his senior year.

He continued his association with the New York School poets and the St. Mark's Poetry Project for several years, and moved to San Francisco in 1976, where through Benson and Robinson he met other writers—such as Rae Armantrout, Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian, Tom Mandel, Ted Pearson, Bob Perelman, Ron Silliman, and Barrett Watten—who would soon become known as the San Francisco Language poets.^[2] Bernheimer wrote and performed for Poets Theater,^[3] and produced and hosted the radio program of new writing by poets, "In the American Tree" on KPFA from 1979 to 1980.^[4] He produces a photo portrait gallery of poets reading on flickr

Bernheimer worked as a corporate communications executive for Bay Area technology and solar companies.^[5] He is married to Melissa Riley, a former San Francisco public librarian and freedom-of-information activist.

Works

• From Nature, 2019, Cuneiform Press (Victoria, TX)
• Younger Than Yesterday, 2017, SFMOMA Open Space
• "A Little Tour of Provence", Nowhere Magazine, August 2015
• The Spoonlight Institute, 2009, Adventures in Poetry (Princeton, NJ)
• "Paris Journal", Nowhere Magazine, November 2009
• "from THE SPOONLIGHT INSTITUTE", The Sienese Shredder #3
• Billionesque, 1999, The Figures (Great Barrinton, MA)
• Cloud Eight, 1999, Sound & Language – with Kit Robinson
• https://eclipsearchive.org/projects/TUUMBA/TUUMBA33/html/index.htmlState Lounge, 1981, Tuumba (Berkeley, CA)
• Café Isotope, 1980, The Figures (Berkeley, CA)

Translation

• Paris by Night: The Pleasures of the Capital (Louis Aragon), 2023, Slacks Books
• Lost Profiles: Memoirs of Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism (Philippe Soupault), 2016, City Lights (San Francisco, CA) ^{[6] [7]}
• The Hamlet of the Bees (Valery Larbaud), 1981, Whale Cloth

Plays

• "Particle Arms," produced by San Francisco Poets Theater, 1982, published in Hills, 1983 and reprinted in The Kenning Anthology of Poets Theater 1945-1985, 2010

Anthologies

• "20 Questions", The best American poetry, 2004, Editors Lyn Hejinian, David Lehman, Simon and Schuster, 2004,

Other online resources

• Electronic Poetry Center
• Pennsound
• mark(s)
• Silliman's Blog
• Wild Horses of Fire
• Plainfeather's Blog
• Poetry Project Newsletter #223, p. 24
• Poetry Project Newsletter #220, p. 14
  • Dia Center for the Arts

Notes and References

1. Web site: From Nature: An Interview with Alan Bernheimer.
2. Web site: The Grand Piano Authors.
3. Web site: The Grand Piano - San Francisco Poets Theater.
4. Web site: PennSound: In the American Tree.
5. Web site: Alan Bernheimer . LinkedIn.
6. Web site: LOST PROFILES | Kirkus Reviews.
7. Web site: Nonfiction Book Review: Lost Profiles: Memoirs of Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism by Philippe Soupault, trans. From the French by Alan Bernheimer. City Lights, $13.95 paper (114p) ISBN 978-0-87286-727-7.