We Are Nothing and So Can You

We Are Nothing and So Can You We Are Nothing and So Can You is a book-length poem for the long 21st century to come, a poem of revolts past, present, and future. In alternating passages of rhapsodic verse and speculative prose, Bernes plots the dynamic movement of history, both irreversible and recursive, moving forward directly and by twists and turns, in sentences and lines, standing still and hurtling toward the abyss. This is an epic for an age without heroes save collective heroes, leaping from the occupied plazas and rioting cities of the aughts and teens to futures alternately desolate and full of promise.I think this is one of the poem’s great achievementsto write a description of a post-revolutionary moment that isn’t a utopia; to use techniques that orbit wider than realism, while looping through a descriptive realism nonetheless. This is beyond the resources of realist fiction when it tries to think about capitalism. The best dystopian science fiction, meanwhile, when it tries to extend capitalism into the future, tends to invite allegorical readings that, while pleasurable, usually lose sight of the thing Bernes has kept our gaze on all the while: the conditions of production under capital, the ones that make us merely 'programmable,' make us just sad apes.” Chris Nealon, The Price of Value” (forthcoming 2016)From We Are Nothing and So Can YouAs for the rest of us, we learnsomething important about ourselveswatching from the loading dockas the mushroom cloudannounces the end of another seasone.g., that each riot really isan assemblage of other riotswashed up on the boulevards,from whose faded corpsesone dresses and arms one’s comradesthe total inadequacy of whichas equipment for the task at handtraces out in negativethe seat perilous of the party historicalthe poetry of the futurewhose sweet new soundswill fill with meaning slowlywhile the seas rise.