The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan Read online

  I completed my reconnaissance and reached our flank regiment just before dawn. There I found its distinguished colonel, Frank McCoy, and its gallant chaplain, Father Duffy, just returned from burying the poet Sergeant Joyce Kilmer beside the stump of one of those trees he had immortalized.

  A Letter

  TO JOHN GIORNO

  When Wyn & Sally and the twins went to Minnesota to visit Wyn’s father last August, Wyn discovered marijuana growing wild all over the Minnesota countryside. He brought back a suitcase full and said to me, “How would you like to go out and harvest some?” So in the middle of September, when the moon was right just before the first frost, we flew out to Minneapolis at 10:30 in the morning with five large suitcases and a trunk. I was dressed in an old Brooks Brothers suit and a vest. We arrived in Minneapolis at 2, were met by a white Hertz rent-a-car and drove 2 hours to Red Wing. All along the side of the road and in front of every farmhouse were these 12 foot high clusters. Wyn said they’re so dumb out there they think that marijuana comes from Mexico. We cased this sand pit and it looked OK. Then we emptied the 5 suitcases and the trunk which were filled with the costumes from “Conquest of the Universe” into a garbage dump and drove to Frontenac where Mark Twain spent his summers. We bought 2 bathing suits and went for a swim in the Mississippi. It was terrific. Then we drove to Lake City which is this 1930’s Bonnie & Clyde town and we sat in this 1930’s soda-fountain cafe waiting for it to get dark. We telephoned Sally and told her everything was going great. Then we drove back to the sand pit and parked the car behind a falling down shed of an abandoned turkey farm and sat watching how many cars passed on the road. When it got dark, we changed into dungarees and went to work. I cut the plants and Wyn cut them into small pieces and stuffed them into plastic bags. There was this jungle of pot plants that looked like giant Christmas Trees and moonlight and dew, and the dew and resin got all over my skin and I was stoned. About 3 A.M. we changed back into the straight clothes and drove to Minneapolis. We didn’t take any amphetamine because I thought we’d look suspicious if we looked like speed freaks at 6 in the morning. I was so tired I just went up to the ticket counter and said to the guy, “Here!” We flew back to NY with 70 pounds of wet grass. It dried down to 24 pounds.

  Che Guevara’s Cigars

  Guevara had noticed me smoking, and had remarked that of course I would never dare smoke Cuban cigars. I told him that I would love to smoke Cuban cigars but that Americans couldn’t get them. The next day, a large polished-mahogany box hand-inlaid with the Cuban seal and amid swirling patterns in the national colors, flying a tiny Cuban flag from a brass key, and crammed with the finest Havanas arrived at my room. With it was a typewritten note from Guevara, reading in Spanish, “Since I have no greeting card, I have to write. Since to write to an enemy is difficult, I limit myself to extending my hand.” (I took the box, the cigars untouched, back to Washington and showed it to President Kennedy. He opened it and asked, “Are they good?” “They’re the best,” I said, whereupon he took one out of the box, lit it, and took a few puffs. Then he looked up at me suddenly and said, “You should have smoked the first one.”)

  Frank O’Hara’s Question

  from “Writers and Issues”

  by John Ashbery

  what sky

  out there is between the ailanthuses

  a 17th century prison an aardvark

  a photograph of Mussolini and

  a personal letter from Isaak Dinesen

  written after eating

  can be succeeded by a calm evaluation

  of the “intense inane” that surrounds

  him:

  it is cool

  I am high

  and happy

  as it turns

  on the earth

  tangles me

  in the air

  and between these two passages (from

  the long poem “Biotherm”) occurs a mediating

  line which might stand to characterize

  all of Mr. O’Hara’s art:

  I am guarding it from mess and message.

  Entrance

  FOR ED DORN

  10 years of boot

  Take it away

  & it’s off

  Under the table

  2

  & I’m hovering

  I’m above American Language

  one foot

  is expressing itself as continuum

  the other, sock

  groan I am dog

  tired from cake

  walking

  to here. That is,

  An Entrance.

  March 17th, 1970

  Someone who loves me calls me

  & I just sit, listening

  Someone who likes me wires me,

  to do something. I’ll do it

  Tomorrow.

  Someone who wants to do me harm

  is after me

  & finds me.

  I need to kill someone

  And that’s what it’s all about.

  Right Now.

  “In Three Parts”

  blank mind part

  Sounds pretty sane to me!

  never thought of that!

  Part two

  Excursions across the ice

  Confusions of the cloth

  bread & butter

  bread & butter

  kiss kiss

  Part Three

  LOVE

  Addenda: Sleep

  Oh, hello, Ted!

  Epithalamion

  Pussy put her paw into the pail of paint.

  “Hip, hop, pip, pop, tip, top, pop-corn”.

  The dipper tipped and the sirup dripped upon her apron.

  Phillippa put the Parson’s parcel beside the Professor’s papers.

  Bowser buried his bone inside a barrel.

  The brown bear stole the bumblebee.

  White snow whirled everywhere.

  The able laborer objects to the bride.

  Adam and Eve stumbled over the rubber tube.

  Mama made a muffler and a muff for me.

  My Mary’s asleep by the murmuring stream

  The meadow-mouse uses the lamp for its moonbeam.

  In Minneapolis, Minnesota there are many married men.

  Many Americans are making money in Mexico.

  Homecoming

  I sit on fat

  like

  An old dog

  Anxious to set. Across

  the fields fruit

  grows in

  Another state. The map

  Goes quietly dark. In the

  corners white

  jasmine blossoms begin

  To radiate

  Cold. In the sky the

  Soft, loose

  stars swarm.

  Now

  drops of blood squirt

  Onto the stiff leaves.

  Now I

  breathe.

  Poop

  Nature makes my teeth “to hurt”

  Each conviction lengthens the sentence

  Women are interesting when I look at them

  Art is medicine for imbeciles

  Great Art is a Great Mistake

  If it’s inspiration you want, drop your panties

  If I fall in love with my friend’s wife, she’s fucked

  alternates:

  I’m fucked

  he’s fucked

  American Express

  Cold rosy dawn in New York City

  not for me

  in Ron’s furlined Jim Bridger

  (coat)

  that I borrowed two years ago

  had cleaned

  but never returned, Thank god!

  On 6th Street

  Lunch poems burn

  a hole is in my pocket

  two donuts one paper bag

  in hand

  hair is in my face and in my head is

  “cold rosy dawn in New York City”

  I woke up this morning

  it was nightr />
  you were on my mind

  on the radio

  And also there was a letter

  and it’s to you

  if “you” is Ron Padgett,

  American express

  shivering now in Paris

  Oklahoma

  two years before

  buying a new coat for the long trip

  back to New York City

  that I’m wearing now

  It is cold in here

  for two

  looking for the boll weevil

  (looking for a home), one with pimples

  one blonde, from Berkeley

  who says, “Help!” and

  “Hey, does Bobby Dylan come around here?”

  “No, man,” I say,

  “Too cold!”

  & they walk off, trembling,

  (as I do in L.A.)

  so many tough guys, faggots, & dope addicts!

  though I assure them

  “Nothing like that in New York City!”

  It’s all in California!

  (the state state)

  that shouldn’t be confused with

  The balloon state

  that I’m in now

  hovering over the radio

  following the breakfast of champions

  & picking my curious way

  from left to right

  across my own white

  expansiveness

  MANHATTAN!

  listen

  The mist of May

  is on the gloaming

  & all the clouds

  are halted, still

  fleecey

  & filled

  with holes.

  They are alight with borrowed warmth,

  just like me.

  February Air

  FOR DONNA DENNIS

  Can’t cut it (night)

  in New York City

  it’s alive

  inside my tooth

  on St. Mark’s Place

  where exposed nerve

  jangles

  •

  that light

  isn’t on

  for me

  that’s it

  though you are

  right here.

  •

  It’s RED RIVER

  time

  on tv

  and

  Andy’s BRILLO BOX is on

  the icebox is on High

  too over St. Nazaire, the

  Commando is poised

  that means tonight’s raid

  is “on”

  The Monkey

  at the typewriter

  is turned on

  (but the tooth hurts)

  You’d Better Move On. . . .

  You’d Better Move On

  Black Power

  It’s ritzy Thrift,

  Horn & Hardart’s is

  too, one

  cup of coffee, black

  away from it

  & Generosity

  though commingling with incontrovertible hard- (art)

  headedness

  does warm

  & it keeps it up

  e. g.

  “Art is art & life is

  Life.” Fairfield Porter said

  that:

  & That means

  Coffee

  Black as on

  57th Street

  The Hotel Buckingham (facade) is

  looming over lunch poems & I

  looming over coffeecup white two eyes

  looming over Joe’s black & yellow polka-dots

  (a tie)

  that once belonged to Montgomery Clift:

  It’s all mine now, is saved, knowing

  That, & that happily being that

  “the living is easy”

  Tho the art is hard,

  sometimes, to see

  through so much looming:

  More coffee may save me that.

  The Ten Greatest Books of the Year (1967)

  Apollinaire Oeuvres Poetiques

  Swami Sivananda, Waves of Bliss

  James Joyce, Ulysses

  Gerard Malanga & Andy Warhol, Screen Test/A Diary

  The Collected Earlier Poems of William Carlos Williams

  Helen Hathaway, What Your Voice Reveals

  Jean Jacques Mayoux, Melville

  Kay Ambrose, Ballet-Lovers Pocketbook

  Roger Shattuck, Apollinaire

  William Shakespeare, Cymbeline

  Charlin’s Anglo-French Course 3rd Part

  The Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms

  Locus Solus No. 2

  Compositions Property of Ted Berrigan

  Jack Kerouac, Mexico City Blues

  Ron Loewinsohn, L’Autre

  Ted Berrigan, Clear the Range

  Philip Whalen, Selfportrait from Another Direction

  Wallace Stevens, Collected Poems

  The Complete Sonnets Songs and Poems of William Shakespeare

  Boswell’s Life of Johnson

  The Collected Later Poems of William Carlos Williams

  The Oxford Book of English Verse

  Williams & Macy, Do You Know English Literature

  Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

  Jim Carroll, Organic Trains

  Stokely Carmichael, Toward Black Liberation

  Ted Berrigan, The Sonnets

  Ted Berrigan & Ron Padgett, Bean Spasms

  Dick Gallup, The Lungs of Sophocles

  Eduardo Paolozzi, Kex

  Lawrence Campbell, Sills

  Diter Rot, Buch

  Ted Berrigan, Art Notes

  Velversheen by Eagle-A

  Ron Padgett, Tone Arm

  Poetry Magazine May 1960

  University Note Book

  Jim Brodey, Clothesline

  The Cantos of Ezra Pound CX–CXVI

  Frank O’Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

  Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

  David Henderson, Felix of the Silent Forest

  Poets of the English Language Vol. III Milton to Goldsmith

  Poets of the English Language Vol. I Langland to Spenser

  Poets of the English Language Vol. V Tennyson to Yeats

  Fuck You, A Magazine of the Arts Vol. 6, No. 5

  The World No. 7

  William Burroughs, Time

  Folder No. 2

  Larry McMurtry, The Last Picture Show

  “C” Comics

  The Ten Greatest Books of the Year, 1968

  The Collected Earlier Poems by William Carlos Williams

  Selected Writings Charles Olson

  Chicago Review One Dollar

  Alkahest

  New American Writing No. 1

  THE RANDOM HOUSE DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

  The Pocket Aristotle

  After Dinner We Take a Drive into the Night by Tony Towle

  Love Poems (Tentative Title) by Frank O’Hara

  The Sky Pilot in No Man’s Land by Ralph Connors

  Cosmic Consciousness by Dr. Richard Bucke

  Meditations on the Signs of the Zodiac by John Jocelyn

  In Public In Private by Edwin Denby

  The World Number 1 Cover by Dan Clark

  The World Number 2 Cover by Robert McMillan

  The World Number 3 Cover by George Schneeman

  The World Number 4 Cover by Donna Dennis

  The World Number 5 Cover by Jack Boyce

  The World Number 6 Cover by Fielding Dawson

  The World Number 7 Cover by Bill Beckman

  The World Number 8 Cover by George Schneeman

  The World Number 9 Cover by Joe Brainard

  The World Number 10 Cover by Larry Fagin

  The World Number 11 Cover by Tom Clark

  The World Number 12 Cover by George Schneeman

  The World Number 13 Cover by Donna Dennis

  The World Number 14 Cover by Joe Brainard

  Waterloo Sunset

  We ate lunch, remember? and I paid t
he check

  Under trees in rain of false emotion and big bull

  With folks going in and out putting words in our mouths that are

  shouting, “Hurrah for Bristol Cream!” We threw a leave-sandwich

  Into the sunlight—it greedily gobbled it up, and growing brighter

  Emanating from their glasses came the little drinkies

  Reflections of the magazine Grandma edits

  On whose pages a bouquet is blossoming sort of. You bounced a check

  Into years of lives down under the weather vane, barf!

  The influence of alcohol rebounded 500 miles into Africa.

  But a little drinkie never hurt nobody, except an African.

  The Earth sops up liquids, I mean drinks,

  And is tipsy as pinballs on the ocean

  Wobbling on its axis. We turn a paleface shade of white

  In the rain that pelts the doo-doo

  That flies from the eyes’ blinds. It doesn’t matter though

  on the sweet side

  Of the moon. Don’t be a horrible sourpuss

  Moon! Have a drink

  Have an entire issue! Waves goodbye & reels, into sun

  Of light dark light roll over Beethoven

  Our shelter-half misses your shelter-half. There’s nothing left

  of love

  But we have checkerberry leaves

  Mint, Juniper, tree-light

  Elder-flowers, sweet goldenrod, bugspray & Juice.

  And you are a pretty girl-boy

  And I am a pretty man-woman

  and we are here-there

  In England and the food is absolutely cold-hot.

  In the aromatic sundown, according to the magazine version

  Or automatic sundown English words are a gas

  Slurring the Earth’s one heaving angel turns in unison

  & paddles your rear gently as befits one in love

  with you & I

  No change My face is all right

  For us. We are bored through & we are through with you

  With our professionalism (you have to become useless to drink).

  All we ever wanted to do in the rosy sunlight was

  In the first place was . . . was . . . was . . . uh

  Run our fingers through your curly hair