The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan Read online

  1981

  In a Blue River published by Little Light Books. In May conducted influential and notorious four-day residency at 80 Langton Street, San Francisco, which included a reading of new work, a confrontational evening with the Language Poets, a panel discussion of Ted’s work, and a full-length reading of The Sonnets. Throughout the year wrote prose commentaries and reviews for the Poetry Project Newsletter (edited by Greg Masters).

  1982

  The Morning Line published by Am Here Books/Immediate Editions. The Sonnets reissued by United Artists with six additional sonnets. Became Writer in Residence at CCNY in the spring. Peggy Berrigan died in July. Throughout this year worked on A Certain Slant of Sunlight.

  1983

  Writing last poems. Becoming increasingly ill but continuing to function as much as possible. Conducted lengthy but unsuccessful interview with James Schuyler. Died on July 4 of complications from cirrhosis of the liver, which was most probably caused by the hepatitis C virus. Buried at Calverton National Cemetery on Long Island, a military cemetery.

  1988

  A Certain Slant of Sunlight published by O Books.

  1991

  Talking in Tranquility: Interviews with Ted Berrigan, edited by Stephen Ratcliffe and Leslie Scalapino, published by Avenue B and O Books.

  1994

  Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan, edited by Aram Saroyan, published by Penguin.

  1997

  On the Level Everyday: Selected Talks on Poetry and the Art of Living, edited by Joel Lewis, published by Talisman House, Publishers.

  1998

  Great Stories of the Chair published by Situations.

  2000

  The Sonnets reissued by Penguin with six additional sonnets.

  The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan

  The Sonnets

  TO JOE BRAINARD

  I

  His piercing pince-nez. Some dim frieze

  Hands point to a dim frieze, in the dark night.

  In the book of his music the corners have straightened:

  Which owe their presence to our sleeping hands.

  The ox-blood from the hands which play

  For fire for warmth for hands for growth

  Is there room in the room that you room in?

  Upon his structured tomb:

  Still they mean something. For the dance

  And the architecture.

  Weave among incidents

  May be portentous to him

  We are the sleeping fragments of his sky,

  Wind giving presence to fragments.

  II

  Dear Margie, hello. It is 5:15 a.m.

  dear Berrigan. He died

  Back to books. I read

  It’s 8:30 p.m. in New York and I’ve been running around all day

  old come-all-ye’s streel into the streets. Yes, it is now,

  How Much Longer Shall I Be Able To Inhabit The Divine

  and the day is bright gray turning green

  feminine marvelous and tough

  watching the sun come up over the Navy Yard

  to write scotch-tape body in a notebook

  had 17 and 1/2 milligrams

  Dear Margie, hello. It is 5:15 a.m.

  fucked til 7 now she’s late to work and I’m

  18 so why are my hands shaking I should know better

  III

  Stronger than alcohol, more great than song,

  deep in whose reeds great elephants decay;

  I, an island, sail, and my shores toss

  on a fragrant evening, fraught with sadness

  bristling hate.

  It’s true, I weep too much. Dawns break

  slow kisses on the eyelids of the sea,

  what other men sometimes have thought they’ve seen.

  And since then I’ve been bathing in the poem

  lifting her shadowy flowers up for me,

  and hurled by hurricanes to a birdless place

  the waving flags, nor pass by prison ships

  O let me burst, and I be lost at sea!

  and fall on my knees then, womanly.

  IV

  Lord, it is time. Summer was very great.

  All sweetly spoke to her of me

  about your feet, so delicate, and yet double E!!

  And high upon the Brooklyn Bridge alone,

  to breathe an old woman slop oatmeal,

  loveliness that longs for butterfly! There is no pad

  as you lope across the trails and bosky dells

  I often think sweet and sour pork”

  shoe repair, and scary. In cities,

  I strain to gather my absurdities

  He buckled on his gun, the one

  Poised like Nijinsky

  at every hand, my critic

  and when I stand and clank it gives me shoes

  V

  Squawking a gala occasion, forgetting, and

  “Hawkaaaaaaaaaa!” Once I went scouting

  As stars are, like nightmares, a crucifix.

  Why can’t I read French? I don’t know why can’t you?

  Rather the matter of growth

  My babies parade waving their innocent flags

  Huddled on the structured steps

  Flinging currents into pouring streams

  The “jeunes filles” so rare.

  He wanted to know the names

  He liked boys, never had a mother

  Meanwhile, terrific misnomers went concocted, ayearning,

  ayearning

  The Pure No Nonsense

  And all day: Perceval! Perceval!

  VI

  The bulbs burn phosphorescent, white

  Your hair moves slightly,

  Tenseness, but strength, outward

  And the green rug nestled against the furnace

  Dust had covered all the tacks, the hammer

  . . . optimism for the jump . . .

  The taste of such delicate thoughts

  Never bring the dawn.

  The bulbs burn, phosphorescent, white,

  Melting the billowing snow with wine:

  Could the mind turn jade? everything

  Turning in this light, to stones,

  Ash, bark like cork, a fading dust,

  To cover the tracks of “The Hammer.”

  Poem in the Traditional Manner

  Whenever Richard Gallup is dissevered,

  Fathers and teachers, and daemons down under the sea,

  Audenesque Epithalamiums! She

  Sends her driver home and she stays with me.

  Match-Game etcetera! Bootleggers

  Barrel-assing chevrolets grow bold. I summon

  To myself sad silent thoughts,

  Opulent, sinister, and cold.

  Shall it be male or female in the tub?

  And grawk go under, and grackle disappear,

  And high upon the Brooklyn Bridge alone,

  An ugly ogre masturbates by ear:

  Of my darling, my darling, my pipe and my slippers,

  Something there is is benzedrine in bed:

  And so, so Asiatic, Richard Gallup

  Goes home, and gets his gat, and plugs his dad.

  Poem in the Modern Manner

  She comes as in a dream with west wind eggs,

  bringing Huitzilopochtli hot possets:

  Snakeskins! But I am young, just old enough

  to breathe, an old woman, slop oatmeal,

  lemongrass, dewlarks, full draught of, fall thud.

  Lady of the May, thou art fair,

  Lady, thou art truly fair! Children,

  When they see your face,

  Sing in idiom of disgrace.

  Pale like an ancient scarf, she is unadorned,

  bouncing a red rubber ball in the veins.

  The singer sleeps in Cos. Strange juxtaposed

  the phantom sings: Bring me red demented rooms,

  warm and delicate words! Swollen as if new-out-of-bed

  Huitzilopochtli goes his
dithyrambic way,

  quick-shot, resuscitate, all roar!

  From a Secret Journal

  My babies parade waving their innocent flags

  an unpublished philosopher, a man who must

  column after column down colonnade of rust

  in my paintings, for they are present

  I am wary of the mulctings of the pink promenade,

  went in the other direction to Tulsa,

  glistering, bristling, cozening whatever disguises

  S of Christmas John Wayne will clown with

  Dreams, aspirations of presence! Innocence gleaned,

  annealed! The world in its mysteries are explained,

  and the struggles of babies congeal. A hard core is formed.

  “I wanted to be a cowboy.” Doughboy will do.

  Romance of it all was overwhelming

  daylight of itself dissolving and of course it rained.

  Real Life

  1. The Fool

  He eats of the fruits of the great Speckle

  Bird, pissing in the grass! Is it possible

  He is incomplete, bringing you Ginger Ale

  Of the interminably frolicsome gushing summer showers?

  You were a Campfire Girl,

  Only a part-time mother and father; I

  Was large, stern, acrid, and undissuadable!

  Ah, Bernie, we wear complete

  The indexed Webster Unabridged Dictionary.

  And lunch is not lacking, ants and clover

  On the grass. To think of you alone

  Suffering the poem of these states!

  Oh Lord, it is bosky, giggling happy here,

  And you, and me, the juice, at last extinct!

  2. The Fiend

  Red-faced and romping in the wind

  I too am reading the technical journals, but

  Keeping Christmas-safe each city block

  With tail-pin. My angels are losing patience,

  Never win. Except at night. Then

  I would like a silken thread

  Tied round the solid blooming winter.

  Trees stand stark-naked guarding bridal paths;

  The cooling wind keeps blowing, and

  There is a faint chance in geometric boxes!

  It doesn’t matter, though, to show he is

  Your champion. Days are nursed on science fiction

  And you tremble at the books upon the earth

  As my strength and I walk out and look for you.

  Penn Station

  On the green a white boy goes

  And he walks. Three ciphers and a faint fakir

  No One Two Three Four Today

  I thought about all those radio waves

  Winds flip down the dark path of breath

  Passage the treasure Gomangani I

  Forget bring the green boy white ways

  And the wind goes there

  Keats was a baiter of bears

  Who died of lust (You lie! You lie!)

  As so we all must in the green jungle

  Under a sky of burnt umber we bumble to

  The mien florist’s to buy green nosegays

  For the fey Saint’s parade Today

  We may read about all those radio waves

  XIII

  Mountains of twine and

  Teeth braced against it

  Before gray walls. Feet walk

  Released by night (which is not to imply

  Death) under the murk spell

  Racing down the blue lugubrious rainway

  To the big promise of emptiness

  In air we get our feet wet. . . . a big rock

  Caresses cloud bellies

  He finds he cannot fake

  Wed to wakefulness, night which is not death

  Fuscous with murderous dampness

  But helpless, as blue roses are helpless.

  Rivers of annoyance undermine the arrangements.

  XIV

  We remove a hand . . .

  In a roomful of smoky man names burnished dull black

  And labelled “blue” the din drifted in . . .

  Someone said “Blake-blues” and someone else “pill-head”

  Meaning bloodhounds. Someone shovelled in some

  Cotton-field money brave free beer and finally “Negroes!”

  They talked . . .

  He thought of overshoes looked like mother

  Made him

  Combed his hair

  Put away your hair. Books shall speak of us

  When we are gone, like soft, dark scarves in gay April.

  Let them discard loves in the Spring search! We

  await a grass hand.

  XV

  In Joe Brainard’s collage its white arrow

  He is not in it, the hungry dead doctor.

  Of Marilyn Monroe, her white teeth white-

  I am truly horribly upset because Marilyn

  and ate King Korn popcorn,” he wrote in his

  of glass in Joe Brainard’s collage

  Doctor, but they say “I LOVE YOU”

  and the sonnet is not dead.

  takes the eyes away from the gray words,

  Diary. The black heart beside the fifteen pieces

  Monroe died, so I went to a matinee B-movie

  washed by Joe’s throbbing hands. “Today

  What is in it is sixteen ripped pictures

  does not point to William Carlos Williams.

  XVI

  Into the closed air of the slow

  Warmth comes, a slow going down of the Morning Land

  She is warm. Into the vast closed air of the slow

  Going down of the Morning Land

  One vast under pinning trembles doom ice

  Spreads beneath the mud troubled ice

  Smother of a sword

  Into her quick weak heat. She

  Is introspection. One vast ice laden

  Vast seas of doom and mud spread across the lake. Quick

  heat,

  Of her vast ice laden self under introspective heat.

  White lake trembles down to green goings

  On, shades of a Chinese wall, itself “a signal.”

  It is a Chinese signal.

  XVII

  FOR CAROL CLIFFORD

  Each tree stands alone in stillness

  After many years still nothing

  The wind’s wish is the tree’s demand

  The tree stands still

  The wind walks up and down

  Scanning the long selves of the shore

  Her aimlessness is the pulse of the tree

  It beats in tiny blots

  Its patternless pattern of excitement

  Letters birds beggars books

  There is no such thing as a breakdown

  The tree the ground the wind these are

  Dear, be the tree your sleep awaits

  Sensual, solid, still, swaying alone in the wind

  XVIII

  Dear Marge, hello. It is 5:15 a.m.

  Outside my room atonal sounds of rain

  In my head. Dreams of Larry Walker

  Drum in the pre-dawn. In my skull my brain

  Season, cold images glitter brightly

  In his marriage bed: of David Bearden

  Answering. “Deteriorating,” you said.

  Say it. And made it hard to write. You know

  Margie, tonight, and every night, in any

  Aches in rhythm to that pounding morning rain.

  Them over and over. And now I dread

  Not a question, really, but you did

  In your letter, many questions. I read

  Paranoid: and of Martin Cochran, dead.

  XIX

  Harum-scarum haze on the Pollock streets

  Where Snow White sleeps among the silent dwarfs

  The fleet drifts in on an angry tidal wave

  Or on the vast salt deserts of America

  Drifts of Johann Strauss

  A boy first sou
ght in Tucson Arizona

  The withering weathers of

  Melodic signs of Arabic adventure

  Of polytonic breezes gathering in the gathering winds

  Mysterious Billy Smith a fantastic trigger

  Of a plush palace shimmering velvet red

  The cherrywood romances of rainy cobblestones

  A dark trance

  In the trembling afternoon

  XXI

  On the green a white boy goes

  We may read about all those radio waves

  And he walks. Three ciphers and a faint fakir

  For the fey Saint’s parade Today

  No One Two Three Four Today

  Under a sky of burnt umber we bumble to

  Forget Bring the green boy white ways

  As so we all must in the green jungle

  Winds flip down the dark path of breath

  The mien florist’s to buy green nosegays

  Passage the treasure Gomangani

  I thought about all those radio waves

  Keats was a baiter of bears

  Who died of lust (You lie! You lie!)

  And the wind goes there

  XXII

  Go fly a kite he writes

  Who cannot escape his own blue hair

  who storms to the big earth and is not absent-minded

  & Who dumbly begs a key & who cannot pay his way

  Racing down the blue lugubrious rainway

  day brakes and night is a quick pick-me-up

  Rain is a wet high harried face

  To walk is wet hurried high safe and game

  Tiny bugs flit from pool to field and light on every bulb

  Whose backs hide doors down round wind-tunnels

  He is an umbrella. . . .

  Many things are current

  Simple night houses rain

  Standing pat in the breathless blue air.