Secular Jewish Culture / Radical Poetic Practice

An email from Charles Bernstein sends me this very interesting link: a video of the "Secular Jewish Culture / Radical Poetic Practice" talks from last September.

Here's the description:

RealMedia video (2:33:47)
[Please note this is a very large dowloadable file.]

Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2004 -- 7pm
Center for Jewish History/American Jewish Historical Society
15 West 16th Street, Manhattan

A public forum with Paul Auster, Charles Bernstein (chair), Kathryn Hellerstein, Stephen Paul Miller, Marjorie Perloff, Jerome Rothenberg

What are the innovations and inventions of American Jewish poets, over the past century? Can we say that there is a distinctly Jewish component to radical modernist and contemporary poetry? What is the relation of Jewish modernist and contemporary poets to the historical avant-garde and to contemporary innovative poetry? How does Jewish cultural life and ethnic and religious forms and traditions manifest themselves in the forms, styles, and approaches to radical American poetry? What role does a distinctly secular approach to Jewishness by poets and other Jewish artists mean for "radical Jewish culture"?

I'll report on what it contains when I've had the chance to view it. Until then, enjoy!