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