This thesis reads the poetry and poetics of Charles Bernstein in relation to his interest in sophistry and sophistics. Taking his 1987 volume The Sophist as a central text, the influence of a sense of sophistics is developed across his wider range of published works. This involves identifying some of the many different interpretations of the sophists throughout the history of philosophy, from the early dismissals by Plato and Aristotle to the more recent reappraisals of their works. A secondary aspect of the thesis is in examining the renewal of interest in the Ancient Greek sophists and suggesting some of the affinities between contemporary literary theory and poetics and the fragments of the works of the major sophists (primarily Protagoras and Gorgias). Finally, I suggest that The Sophist itself is a valuable and contemporaneous re-examination of sophistic ideas, that in fact goes further than those by academics from within philosophy and rhetoric by virtue of employing the stylistic innovations and linguistic experimentation that was so central to the sophistic approach.

Preface: A consideration of the New Sincerity movement in contemporary American poetics in the work of Tao Lin, Matt Hart, and Dorothea Lasky. Creative work: A three section book of poetry exploring elegy, form, and the intersection of strangeness and domesticity.

This dissertation is an exploration of the strain of Buddhist thought and practice running through American Modernism and American Modernist Poetry. I examine the works, both poetic and critical, of two authors, Allen Ginsberg and Norman Fischer. I explore Allen Ginsberg's relationship with Buddhism, as it changed throughout his life, looking at key poems in his early career, such as "Sakyamuni Coming Out of the Mountain," and "The Change: Kyoto to Tokyo Express." I also examine "Howl" in light of Ginsberg's early experiences with Buddhism and other spiritual forms. I consider some of the poetics and politics of "Howl" as an example of the both the poetic space and the mind Ginsberg prepared for his later spiritual and poetic life. I also theorize the connections between the Buddhist attitude that Ginsberg cultivates and the modernism of Ezra Pound, who eschewed Buddhist ideas and terms in his re-working of Ernest Fenollosa's well-known essay, "The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry." I examine the way Ginsberg considered Pound's Cantos as a model of a mind, in the act of the real work of thinking. I end my treatment of Ginsberg's work with a reading of "Father Death Blues" which Ginsberg considered the "culmination" of his Buddhist training. Looking at Norman Fischer, I focus closely on the Zen aspects of his writing, spending special attention on notions of the koan, as well as things he says (in his Zen lectures and elsewhere) about intersections between Zen mind perception models and models of mind that come via the practices of psychoanalysis. I work to explain how Fischer situates in terms of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets and other avant-garde poetic movements. I explore how Fischer's innovative style(s) work within his poetic practices in "Praise," an extended journal/diary poem from Precisely The Point Being Made and the Cage/MacLow practices of releasing of ego and agency in writing methods. I also look at how such journal/diary poems compare to other poetic "mind models" within American Modernism. My chapters on Fischer culminate in a discussion, with significant close readings, of his book Success.