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Praised in recent years as a �calculating, improvisatory, essential poet� by Daisy Fried in the New York Times, and as �the foremost poet-critic of our time� by Craig Dworkin, Charles Bernstein is a leading voice in American poetry. Near/Miss, Bernstein�s first poetry collection in five years, is the apotheosis of his late style, thick with off-center rhythms, hilarious riffs, and verbal extravagance. This collection�s title highlights poetry�s ability to graze reality without killing it, and at the same time implies that the poems themselves are wounded by the grief of loss. The book opens with a rollicking satire of difficult poetry�proudly declaring itself �a totally inaccessible poem��and moves on to the stuff of contrarian pop culture and political cynicism�full of malaprops, mondegreens, nonsequiturs, translations of translations, sardonically vandalized signs, and a hilarious yet sinister feed of blog comments. At the same time, political protest also rubs up against epic collage, through poems exploring the unexpected intimacies and continuities of �our united fates.� These poems engage with works by contemporary painters�including Amy Sillman, Rackstraw Downes, and Etel Adnan�and echo translations of poets ranging from Catullus and Virgil to Goethe, Cruz e Souza, and Kandinsky. Grounded in a politics of multiplicity and dissent, and replete with both sharp edges and subtle intimacies, Near/Miss is full of close encounters of every kind.