The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan Read online

  The postcard poem was a form dominated by the size of the card, though a relatively longer poem could be written on a card if Ted shrank his handwriting. Ted immediately used semi-collaboration as a way into the poems, inducing everyone he knew to write a line or draw an image on a postcard. He later eliminated the names of the “facilitators,” except for the occasional dedication. The poems are often epigrammatic, but are just as likely to be longer; they chronicle, not so explicitly, a difficult year—in terms of health, finances, relationships with friends. They are about the workings of a community, about poetry quarrels and poetry festivals, about cops on the corner and what music is being listened to, what is going on in the newspapers. Ted produced a couple hundred original poems; there are one hundred exactly in A Certain Slant of Sunlight, which I edited after his death, according to his instructions.

  We also present here a separate section of the best of the out-takes from A Certain Slant of Sunlight, thirty-three more “postcard poems,” many of which could easily have been included in the book. One suspects Ted of fetishizing the number one hundred; but approximately that number seems to be how many the mind is capable of considering in relation to one another. These additional thirty-three, hopefully, suggest a book of their own.

  Though A Certain Slant of Sunlight contains many of Ted’s “forms,” his voice has changed. The necessity for concision, imposed by the size of the card, pushes tone of voice up against language up against form: “HOLLYWOOD / paid Lillian Gish $800,000 to / disappear so lovely so pure like milk / seems but isn’t because of the fall-out / but it would have only cost me five & didn’t, so I did.” Many of the poems are monologues for the person who provided the phrase or image, or are in dialogue with him/her. Some work with texts of dead poets, Whitman and Lindsay for example, or with songs. There is a flexibility of tone throughout, which has emerged from the lengthier autobiographical poems of the late 70s and early 80s, but must operate more quickly. This book is extraordinary without appearing to be: it doesn’t have “monument” written on it, but it isn’t like anything else.

  Ted’s last poems are the fourteen poems—twenty-one pages—he wrote after the completion of A Certain Slant of Sunlight during the final six months of his life. It must be obvious by now that Ted did not slow down as a writer during his last years, and these poems are sharp and fulsome. They were kept together in a folder with a handwritten title page: “Poems/ /Ted Berrigan.” Some are short in the manner of A Certain Slant of Sunlight, and there are several longer poems, including an abrasive “Stand-Up Comedy Routine,” made from a Mad-Libs form.1 But Ted’s very last poem is a lovely six-page work, “This Will Be Her Shining Hour,” written in dialogue with myself and the voices in a Fred Astaire movie on TV. “ ‘Their lives are as fragile as The Glass Menagerie.’” That line near the end of Ted’s final poem refers to the people in the movie, the people in the poem, and the two of us as both people in the poem and ourselves, comparing them/us to Tennessee Williams’s play, to glass figures, to the enduringness of the play about fragile people. What does lives mean then? Lives seems to be “art,” and so one is left thinking about the strength of poetry.

  Ted Berrigan’s poems are very deliberate. They have a graven quality as if they were drawn on the page, word by word. He often wrote in unlined notebooks with a black felt-tip pen, and one might also say they have a black-felt-tip-pen quality. You feel that no words have been crossed out and replaced.

  I’m impressed by this graven-ness in The Sonnets and Many Happy Returns, in Easter Monday, but then, too, in most of the later work. It doesn’t go away if the feeling in the poem is more autobiographical or intimate, as in A Certain Slant of Sunlight. The latter poems read as if written with the black felt-tip pen, on the postcard. They have a primary physical reality.

  Two more things from this: first, a continuous interaction with art and artists gave Ted an active visual and tactile sense. He is often painting, or collaging, or drawing his way through a poem. On the other hand, he agreed with Jack Spicer’s notion of the other voice that dictates one’s poems, and his poems have a “dictated” quality, even the ones that are made from other people’s words. These two notions aren’t incompatible. “Dictation” suggests aurality rather than plastic qualities, but there isn’t any reason why all the senses shouldn’t be working, and Ted had a very fine ear: “Their lives are as fragile as The Glass Menagerie.” Listen.

  Ted’s poetry is remarkable for its range of tones of voice. He actively studied both “tone of voice” and “stance,” the range of attitudinal play in human discourse and the projection of character. Here Ted’s professed model was Frank O’Hara, but I often find Ted more mysterious and more intense in both tone and stance. Not having O’Hara’s education or “class,” Ted therefore couldn’t be as traditional. He couldn’t call on a tone of voice from another decade or century as if he owned it, even though he knew exactly what Whitmanesque or Johnsonian was. He had to reinvent it for himself, from his working-class background and University of Tulsa education and ceaseless self-education.

  Ted is often characterized as “second-generation New York School.” That label, with its “second-generation,” seems to preclude innovation. Ted’s career as a poet, after his earliest, sentimental poems, begins in the innovation of The Sonnets. He invented its form, with its “black heart beside the fifteen pieces” and its “of glass in Joe Brainard’s collage,” if you take fifteen to be most likely fourteen and understand that his heart really is beside the poem not in it. These poems, designed to contain anything and to expand temporally, can do so because the form’s finiteness is emphasized. It could probably be argued that this form is the one he was most informed by afterward, even when he was being transparent and “sentimental”—when he had finally learned the uses and control of sentimentality, since he consistently explored the spaces between lines, and the spaces between phrases, within the poem as frame. He had also learned from his sonnet form how to find the congruences in supposedly random happenstance:

  Can’t cut it (night)

  in New York City

  it’s alive

  inside my tooth

  on St. Mark’s Place

  where exposed nerve

  jangles

  (“FEBRUARY AIR”)

  This is verbal, environmental, and emotional happenstance, where the parts of the moment click in.

  If you the reader are a poet, Ted’s poetry is full of resources: forms, techniques, stylistic practices—manners and mannerisms, ways of sounding like a person, ways of achieving exaltation. If you the reader are a reader (of poetry), Ted’s poetry is a gift. He is working hard to amuse—make you enjoy this taking up of your time; to “say,” what he knows, reasons, feels; and to be like you, at the same time acknowledging his (anyone’s) own secret: “I never told anyone what I knew. Which was that it wasn’t / for anyone else what it was for me” (“Cranston Near the City Line”).

  We have, traditionally, the senses, but words are our sensors. We use them to feel our way across and through, up and down. Ted understood this as well as any poet I can think of. So much of his poetry is about the pleasure of movement across the page. He is saying, “This is what we do. This is living, taking its walk.” It is a very gentle message, that of the walk through time, laid alongside the message that all time is simultaneous. But, also,

  No-mind

  No messages

  (Inside)

  Thanksgiving 1969

  (“IN MY ROOM”)

  ALICE NOTLEY

  PARIS, 2004

  1. Mad-Libs, an offshoot of Mad magazine, contained fill-in-the-blank and multiple-choice do-it-yourself versions of country songs, comedy routines, anecdotes, and so forth.

  Chronology

  1934

  Born on November 15 in Providence, Rhode Island, to Margaret Dugan Berrigan and Edmund Joseph Berrigan, the oldest of four children, with Rick, Kathy, and Johnny to follow. His father, Ed, was chief maintenance engineer at the Ward
Baking Company Plant, and his mother, Peggy, was a bookkeeper and cashier in the public schools lunch program.

  1952

  Graduated from La Salle Academy.

  1953

  Attended Providence College. In Ted’s own words he was educated in the “Catholic school system, first by the Sisters of Mercy, then at La Salle Academy with the Christian Brothers, and for one year under the Dominicans at Providence College.”

  1954

  Joined the army, spending sixteen months in Korea, stationed at Uijongbu, between 1954 and 1955.

  1955

  Was transferred to Tulsa, having attained the rank of sergeant (SP3) and having received a good conduct medal. Began studies at the University of Tulsa on the GI Bill.

  1957

  Discharged from active duty and placed in the reserves.

  1958

  Ted’s father, Ed Berrigan, died.

  1958–59

  Taught eighth grade at Madalene School in Tulsa.

  1959

  Met Ron Padgett, Dick Gallup, and Joe Brainard. (Already knew David Bearden, Pat Mitchell, Marge Kepler, and others.) A Lily for My Love was published in Providence. “The guys in the neighborhood bar had chipped in and paid for the printing” (Ron Padgett, Ted: A Personal Memoir of Ted Berrigan [Great Barrington, Mass.: The Figures, 1993]). Received a BA in Literature from the University of Tulsa.

  1960–61

  Wrote a postcard to Frank O’Hara, beginning their association. Moved to New York in the same time period as Pat Mitchell, Brainard, Gallup, and Padgett. Met O’Hara.

  1962

  Finished his master’s thesis, “The Problem of How to Live as Dealt with in Four Plays by George Bernard Shaw.” Upon receiving his MA from the University of Tulsa, he returned it with the note, “I am the master of no art.” Met Kenneth Koch during Koch’s office hours at Columbia. Took one semester of classical Greek at Columbia; earned money writing papers for Columbia students. Met and married Sandra Alper in New Orleans over the course of a weekend, traumatic difficulties ensuing with Sandy’s family. Began writing The Sonnets.

  1963

  Finished The Sonnets in July. David Berrigan born. Began editing “C” (A Journal of Poetry), published by Lorenz and Ellen Gude, which would run for thirteen issues and two comic strip issues and feature many senior New York School poets as well as Ted’s contemporaries. “C” further spawned “C” Books in 1964, published by the Gudes during the 60s, producing a total of eleven booklets in mimeo format by new writers (and continuing into the 70s under Ted’s sole proprietorship). Most of the art in “C” was by Joe Brainard, with the occasional cover by Andy Warhol. This was and would be a period of intense friendship and collaboration with Padgett, and Gallup, as well as one of artistic collaboration with Brainard. But by 1963 Ted knew Johnny Stanton, Joe Ceravolo, Tom Veitch, Jim Brodey, Harry Fainlight, Tony Towle, Lorenzo Thomas, and other writers of his generation. At the same time Ed Sanders was editing and publishing his journal, Fuck You/A Magazine of the Arts, and Sanders and Ted “spent a lot of time together.” The social aspect of Ted’s life had become all-encompassing and non-parochial and would remain that way for the rest of his life. As he said in the 1973 “Interview with Ruth Gruber” (Talking in Tranquility: Interviews with Ted Berrigan [Bolinas and Oakland: Avenue B and O Books, 1991]), a dual interview with Ted and George Oppen: “I like to know all the groups, because that way is the most fun, and the most interesting.”

  1964

  The first edition of The Sonnets published under the “C” imprint. Gave first reading in New York at Le Metro Café with Allen Ginsberg, Paul Blackburn, Frank O’Hara, and Michael Goldberg in the audience. Began writing reviews for the magazine Kulchur. Received a Poets Foundation Grant. Probably met or by now had met John Ashbery, whose work he published in “C” and who, though living in France, returned to New York from time to time for readings. In 1964 Ashbery gave an electrifying reading of his long poem “The Skaters,” an occasion which Ted referred to throughout his life. Around this time worked on long unpublished prose work, Looking for Chris, not all of which survives.

  1965

  Intensive period of writing for Art News lasting through 1966, though Ted’s art writing would continue sporadically until his death. Attended Berkeley Poetry Conference. Met Ed Dorn, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure, Lew Welch, and Robert Duncan there. Kate Berrigan born.

  1966

  Death of Frank O’Hara. Served on the advisory board of the Poetry Project. Taught the first writing workshop offered at the Project and continued to serve as a teacher off and on until 1979. This was his first poetry teaching post, though that same year he began an intermittent but ongoing participation in the Writers in the Schools Poetry Program. By or around this time had met George Schneeman, Anne Waldman, Lewis Warsh, Tom Clark, Bernadette Mayer, Peter Schjeldahl, Lewis MacAdams, John Godfrey, Donna Dennis, Larry Fagin, Aram Saroyan, Clark Coolidge, Bill Berkson, John Giorno.

  1967

  The Sonnets published by Grove Press. Bean Spasms, a collaborative book with Ron Padgett and Joe Brainard, published by Kulchur Press. Ted interviewed Jack Kerouac (with Aram Saroyan and Duncan Mac-Naughton) for the Paris Review (interview first published in vol. 11, no. 43 [Summer 1968]). Received a Poets Foundation Grant and a National Anthology of Literature Award for “An Interview with John Cage,” which was a fabricated interview using Cageian methods.

  1968

  Left New York to take a writer-in-residence position at the University of Iowa, the Writers’ Workshop, from fall 1968 through spring 1969. Met Anselm Hollo, Gordon Brotherston, Merrill Gilfillan, and others.

  1969

  Separated from Sandy Alper Berrigan. Many Happy Returns published by Corinth Press. Met Alice Notley. Taught fall semester at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. (Lecturer in English and American Literature, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.) Friendship with Donald Hall.

  1970

  Guillaume Apollinaire Ist Tot. Und Anderes, a selection of Ted’s work with German translations by Rolf-Dieter Brinkmann, published in Germany by März Verlag. In the Early Morning Rain published by Cape Goliard Press in England. Taught at Yale University in the spring as Teaching Fellow at Bramford College. Replaced Jack Clarke at the University of Buffalo that summer, where Ted’s classes included the mythology course originally established by Charles Olson.

  1970–71

  Transitional period of moving from place to place with Alice Notley. Lived in Southampton, Long Island (in Larry Rivers’s garage), New York, Providence, and Bolinas. Bolinas at this time included in its community Lewis MacAdams, Joanne Kyger, Don Allen, Phil Whalen, Tom Clark, Robert Creeley, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Bill Berkson, et al.

  1972

  Married Alice Notley. Moved to Chicago and taught at Northeastern Illinois University, following Ed Dorn as Poet in Residence, from winter 1972 until spring 1973. Anselm Berrigan born. Met Bob Rosenthal, Rochelle Kraut, Hank Kanabus, Art Lange and many others, some of whom subsequently moved to New York. Began working on Easter Monday.

  1973

  Moved to England and taught at the University of Essex (replacing Robert Lowell) from fall 1973 until spring 1974. Friends included Gordon Brotherston, Douglas Oliver, Pierre Joris, Tom Pickard, Wendy Mulford, John James, Allen Fisher, Dick Miller, Simon Pettet, Helena Hughes, Marion Farrier, etc. Several of these people subsequently moved to New York as well, part of Ted’s “job” seemingly being to conduct young people toward the New York poetry world. Had work published in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. With Gordon Brotherston worked on translations of poems by Heine, Leopardi, Gautier, Apollinaire, Cabral de Melo Neto, and Neruda.

  1974

  Edmund Berrigan born. Moved back to Chicago and taught at Northeastern Illinois University from fall 1974 until spring 1975.

  1975

  Red Wagon published by the Yellow Press. That summer taught for the first time at Naropa University (then College), beginning an associat
ion that continued until his death.

  1976

  Moved back to New York, ill with hepatitis. Health poor from now on. Extensive association with Harris Schiff, Steve Carey, Tom Carey, and Eileen Myles began.

  1977

  Received a CAPS Grant. Nothing for You published by United Artists. Clear the Range published by Adventures in Poetry.

  1978

  Train Ride published by Vehicle Editions. Worked with Peter Orlovsky on the editing and typing of Orlovsky’s Clean Asshole Poems & Smiling Vegetable Songs: Poems 1957–1977, published by City Lights Books that year.

  1979

  Received an NEA Grant. Yo-Yo’s with Money, a transcription of a live sportscast recorded collaboratively by Ted and Harris Schiff at a baseball game at Yankee Stadium, published by United Artists Books.

  1980

  Taught spring and summer terms at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. So Going Around Cities: Selected Poems 1958–1979 published by Blue Wind Press. Taught at the Stevens Institute of Technology (Distinguished Visiting Professor of Literature) in Hoboken, New Jersey, during the fall of 1980, at the behest of new friend Ed Foster. Ted’s mother, Peggy Berrigan, became ill with lung cancer.