The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan

by Alice Notley

  Things to Do in New York City and 10 Things I Do Every Day These poems mark the first appearance of the things-to-do form in Ted’s work. Ted was particularly interested in “10 Things I Do Every Day,” a short, formalistic poem which is a condensed presentation of a list (Gary Snyder’s “things to do” poems, which list things to do in various world locales, are longer and more casual in form). Ted later used the “list” as a framework for an expansive, discursive poem, opening the space between “items” into a talking, pondering space. This is the technique, for example, of “Things to Do in Providence,” in Red Wagon.

  In the Early Morning Rain

  In the Early Morning Rain was published by Cape Goliard in 1970. Ted worked closely with the editor (and filmmaker) Barry Hall on this volume. The cover art and drawings were by George Schneeman.

  Hello Most of the text of this poem comes from a postcard (the kind you would find in gas stations); the poem introduces immediately an important strand of the book involving found material. The book itself is a collage of old and new styles, idiosyncratic textual surfaces, translation, collaboration, and a new, transparent lyrical manner. There are a number of open-field lyrics in this volume spinning off the style of “Tambourine Life,” which had created a new possibility for a shorter poem. The new style was first realized in Many Happy Returns, in such poems as the title poem and “Things to Do in New York (City).” Shorter poems in In the Early Morning Rain that further exploit the new style include “American Express,” “February Air,” “Grey Morning,” “Things to Do in Anne’s Room,” and “Heroin.”

  80th Congress In the Early Morning Rain contains three poems which are explicit collaborations with other poets. The book is, on one level, “about” community, as its dedication, “To my family & friends,” implies.

  The Circle This is the first of several short meditative poems that appear in the book. See also “It’s Important” and “Dial-A-Poem.”

  5 New Sonnets: A Poem These sonnets are constructed of lines from The Sonnets but are not in any way part of the sequence. They are “new” sonnets.

  Poem (Seven thousand feet over . . .) First appeared in A Lily for My Love, an early chapbook of Ted’s. As the chapbook title indicates, this was very sentimental work, and Ted destroyed every copy he could find. He retained “Poem” however, adding the dedication to Bill Berkson because Berkson had said he liked the poem. Ted left the dedication off in So Going Around Cities, but it seems to belong in In the Early Morning Rain, which is especially replete with dedications. “Poem” was originally printed under the title “Poem” in The White Dove Review 2 (edited by Ron Padgett); the title was subsequently changed to “Grief” in A Lily for My Love and then back to “Poem.” The poem was written in 1958 under the influence of Kenneth Rexroth’s theory of “natural numbers,” which posits a short, syllabic line.

  Ikonostasis We have inserted the poem “Ikonostasis,” not originally published in In the Early Morning Rain, between “Presence” and “The Upper Arm.” Ted had found it difficult to choose between “Ikonostasis” and “Presence,” both obviously influenced by John Ashbery’s The Tennis Court Oath, but was certain a choice was necessary. That choice doesn’t seem to matter so much now. “Ikonostasis” was later published in So Going Around Cities.

  The Upper Arm The second-to-last line originally read “bows that spell” not “boughs that spell.” It is difficult for the tongue to gauge which pronunciation of “bows” to use when reading the poem aloud, so Ted changed the spelling to “boughs” for So Going Around Cities.

  Corridors of Blood Structured somewhat similarly to “Rusty Nails,” this poem employs language drawn from Simone de Beauvoir’s diaries. Ted admired de Beauvoir’s work—and her life lived—but was fascinated, in the case of this poem, by the flatness of the language of translation, how the diaries sounded after being translated from French to English.

  Rusty Nails Ted composed this work by taking lines from various books by other authors, then assigning to them, in a completely automatic fashion, titles from a list given him by Ron Padgett. In “An Interview with Barry Alpert,” he says “I meant “Rusty Nails” to be like a novel; each one of those things is a chapter.”

  LIFE OF A MAN

  This sequence of poems, transliterated from Giuseppe Ungaretti’s Vita di un uomo, first appeared in Bean Spasms in a different order and with the omission of “Tonight” and “Joy of Shipwrecks.” Two poems from the earlier version, “Long Time No See” and Que Sera Sera,” were discarded from this second version.

  Life Among the Woods First published in Bean Spasms, this prose work is a giddy mistranslation from a French grammar book for children.

  In Three Parts and In 4 Parts These two poems, influenced by John Giorno’s treatment of found materials, were first published in Bean Spasms.

  AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN 5 PARTS

  This work, made entirely of found materials, was first published in Bill Berkson’s magazine/anthology Best & Co. in 1969. In that presentation, there were headings beneath the overall title corresponding to each of the five sections: “Childhood,” “Army Life,” “Dope Scene,” “Manners,” and “Poetry.” Ted omitted the headings from In the Early Morning Rain.

  March 17th, 1970 Ted had become interested in the “occasional” poem. The occasion for this poem is St. Patrick’s Day; the poem addresses what that holiday might mean to an Irish American who both liked and disliked “Irish-American-ness.”

  Epithalamion First published in Bean Spasms.

  Poop First published in Bean Spasms.

  February Air The poem originally did not repeat the last line, “You’d Better Move On” (from a Rolling Stones song). The repetition was added in So Going Around Cities, in which this poem appears in the section called Many Happy Returns.

  Black Power Much of this poem is incorporated into the poem “Bean Spasms.”

  The Ten Greatest Books of the Year (1967) This list poem, which originally did not appear in In the Early Morning Rain, has been inserted before “The Ten Greatest Books of the Year, 1968.” The poem was first published in So Going Around Cities.

  interstices and bent These are the first one-word poems published by Ted. The avowed influence is Aram Saroyan, whose book of minimal poems, Aram Saroyan, had been published in 1968.

  The Great Genius This poem originally read as follows: “The Great Genius is / A man who can do the / Average thing when everybody / Else is going crazy.” Ted rewrote the poem in his personal copy of the book, and we have used the rewritten version.

  Poem for Philip Whalen Ted made a handful of punctuational changes in this poem, in his personal copy of the book, all of which we have incorporated.

  Anti-War Poem This is one of Ted’s few overtly political poems. The “anti-war poem” seemed a necessary form in the late 60s. Ted’s version refers to a personal war (“I thought a lot about dying / But I said Fuck it”) as well as to the American war in Vietnam. In “An Interview with Ralph Hawkins” (Talking in Tranquility), Ted states: “I think that every single poem I’ve ever written is a political act. They were all written in the face of a complete desire of the state in the platonic sense to exclude me as a poet, the entire possibility that there is of being a poet. I don’t believe the state as the body politic can exist in a healthy manner without poetry and without poems. Every poem I write is a political act and I have written some specific political poems, but generally the subject matter of politics is not interesting to write about. I’m totally interested in it as take-in, as material.”

  Dial-A-Poem Around 1969 John Giorno ran a telephone service called Dial-A-Poem, which one could call in order to listen to a poet reading a poem. In this poem, the telephone dial becomes the wheel of life: one’s sexuality is an aspect of the poem one dials “this time around.”

  Hall of Mirrors The title refers to Robert Stone’s novel A Hall of Mirrors.

  Ann Arbor Song As Ted took to writing shorter poems as seriously as he had composed his longer wor
ks, he also began to consolidate a public-reading style and to consider more how to bring pleasure to a live audience. The Sonnets and “Tambourine Life,” while they read well aloud, were unwieldy for public readings. In In the Early Morning Rain there are a handful of works which remained among his public-reading favorites, “Ann Arbor Song” being one. He also liked, for reading aloud, the poems “Heroin” and “People Who Died.”

  People Who Died Ted considered that with this work he had invented a form which anyone might use to write a poem. That is, every person has a list of “people who died.” Jim Carroll took Ted at his word and wrote and recorded a song called “People Who Died,” which is his own list of dead friends.

  Telegram This poem is based on Marcel Duchamp’s 1953 telegram to Francis Picabia as Picabia was dying: “Francis à Bientôt.” “Francis, see you soon.”

  Train Ride

  Train Ride was first published by Annabel Levitt’s Vehicle Editions in 1978, although the book itself bears only the 1971 date (of composition): the copyright page reads “copyright Ted Berrigan 1971.” Train Ride had cover art by Joe Brainard.

  Ted had some difficulty converting the handwritten notebook into a correspondingly presented typewritten poem; Ted and Annabel Levitt worked hard at layout for the edition. Open-field poems always posed publication problems, and Ted was finicky. The pleasurable exigencies of these kinds of translations, from handwriting to typescript and from typescript to print, seem to have disappeared with the advent of the computer. Ted was a poet of the notebook and typewriter; the medium he wrote in always permeated the poem. It is arguable that what I call, in the introduction, Ted’s “graven-ness”—that quality by which each word seems etched into the page, cannot be easily obtained if one composes on the computer.

  The writing of Train Ride was occasioned by the circumstance that Ted had an empty notebook and was sitting on a train from New York to Providence, but also by the circumstance that he was reading a gay pornographic novel that Joe Brainard had given him back in New York. The poem is thus “about” the fact of the train—passengers and how they look and talk, what’s out the window, etc.; the fact of the notebook—Ted actually leaves blank pages for Brainard (to whom the poem is addressed) to fill in words if he wishes; and sex—the pornographic novel provokes a long meditation on “fucking,” a word that is repeated many times. Sex eventually segues into love, and Ted expresses his love for his friend Joe; but there is another subject in the poem, as immediate as sex/love, the notebook, the train, which is money. Ted has hardly any money in his pocket: he will get off the train with four dollars and spend most of it on a cab. Train Ride is a poem written exactly in the now moment, about who is there, both materially and in mind, and what is urgent. By the early 70s Ted had become quite adept at this kind of in-the-instant work.

  Memorial Day

  Memorial Day was published twice as a chapbook, once in 1971 by the Poetry Project, in mimeo format, and once in 1974 by Aloes Books, London (editors Jim Pennington, Allen Fisher, and Dick Miller). For the Poetry Project edition, Anne Waldman and Ted ran off copies for the occasion of the May 1971 reading mentioned in the introduction. Donna Dennis did the original cover art, which was reproduced in facsimile in the Aloes Books edition. Memorial Day was reprinted in So Going Around Cities.

  “I dreamed you brought home a baby”: One of Ted’s and Anne Waldman’s intentions in Memorial Day was to include other voices. This sonnet by me, designated by the number “22” and beginning with the line “I dreamed you brought home a baby” is number 22 of a sonnet sequence called 165 Meeting House Lane (New York: “C” Press, 1971).

  “having met the man at the Met”: In this convoluted passage written by Ted, the “man” is Frank O’Hara, “Joe” is Frank’s partner Joe LeSueur, and Vincent is Frank’s lover, Vincent Warren.

  “It is night. You are asleep. & beautiful tears”: This is Sonnet XXXVII from The Sonnets.

  “I doan wanna hear any more about that . . . I tried my best to do my father’s will”: One of the rules for the performance was that Ted and Anne Waldman would each have to sing one of their sections. Waldman sang the passage beginning “I doan wanna hear anymore about / that”; and Ted sang the passage beginning “I tried my best to do my father’s will,” which was modeled on the song “Talking Casey” by Mississippi John Hurt.

  During the time that Ted was co-writing Memorial Day, he was listening obsessively to two record albums, Mississippi John Hurt’s Today! (which contained “Talking Casey”) and an album by the Byrds. His composition process involved being interactive with the music, as if there were something about “voice” he wanted to get from actual singing. And the finished poem is for alternating voices, Waldman’s arrangement of the text alternating sections by the two of them.

  “The windows are closed”: The final litany, written by Ted, was read by the two poets in voices alternating for each phrase ending with “is closed.” After the reading at the Poetry Project, Ted obtained a copy of the tape and listened to it as obsessively as he had to the John Hurt and Byrds albums. He continued to learn from this collaboration for many years and in the early 80s occasionally asked me to read the final litany with him, as a separate piece, at poetry readings.

  Short Poems

  IN A BLUE RIVER

  As explained in the introduction, this chapbook was first published by Susan Cataldo’s Little Light Books in 1981. The majority of the poems were written in the late 60s and early 70s. The dedication is to Kenneth Koch, whom Ted credited for having first interested him in the short poem as a form. The cover art for the original edition was by Susan Cataldo.

  Four poems have been omitted here and kept elsewhere. “After Breakfast,” which originally appeared in In a Blue River after “Chair,” has already been printed in the Life of a Man section in In the Early Morning Rain. “The Green Sea” and “Angst,” which originally appeared one right after the other after “Connecticut,” have also been omitted. “The Green Sea” is placed instead in Nothing for You, and “Angst” in A Certain Slant of Sunlight, where the editors feel that each is more necessary in “making a book.” “People of the Future,” which originally appeared after “Paris Review,” has been retained as the italicized introductory poem to Nothing for You, where it obviously serves an indispensable function.

  Salut! This poem was composed spontaneously, on the tongue, for the birthday of novelist C. D. B. Bryan, at a party in Iowa City in 1969. Ted recited it to me at the party, and I instantly memorized it. Later when Ted was working on the manuscript of In a Blue River in 1981, I reminded him of the poem by reciting it to him. I’m not sure he had written it down before or given it a title.

  Man Alone “Man Alone” was originally the back cover copy for Ted’s novel Clear the Range. The poem is indicative of the texture and manner of Ted’s novel.

  bear with me Ted had considered calling the chapbook Bear With Me but decided against it, keeping this untitled poem.

  Category / MOONDOG The late, eccentric composer called Moondog was well-known to New Yorkers in the 60s and 70s. Tall, long-braided, wearing a Viking hat and lederhosen, he stood in the Times Square area publicizing and selling his compositions, which were all strict canons. In the later part of his life his work actually began to be performed and recorded in Europe and America.

  Buddhist Text Ted strongly identified with the elephant as a totemic animal.

  Setback This poem, originally written in England in 1974, had for a title “Setback: Che.” The third line read, “Che was wounded in the foot” instead of “He was wounded in the foot.”

  Kinks In the 70s, Ted was asked to write a poem about the British rock group the Kinks for a special “Kinks” issue of the Milk Quarterly, edited by Peter Kostakis. This poem was Ted’s contribution.

  Near the Ocean The poem obviously refers to Robert Lowell’s book by the same name and is about reading Lowell’s book in bed, though it might also refer to being in bed with a crabby partner. This is one of sever
al references to Lowell in Ted’s poetry. Though Ted could not help having a smart mouth, he respected and admired Lowell and his work.

  (Untitled) It’s Morning! In a Blue River contains an untitled (undemarcated) sequence of poems, written in 1979, composed of “Untitled (It’s Morning!),” “Air,” “Untitled(Keep my . . .),” “Amsterdam,” “A True Story,” “On St. Mark’s Place,” “Just Friends,” and “For Rosina.” Ted participated in the One World poetry festival in Amsterdam in 1978 and during the same trip collaborated with the Swiss artist Rosina Kühn on a set of poems / paintings. These poems are his texts from that collaboration.

  UNCOLLECTED SHORT POEMS

  Laments, Winter, Think of Anything, Out the Second-Floor Window, and Life in the Future These five poems were first printed in So Going Around Cities. The remaining poems in this section have never been printed in books and were kept in manuscript folders. Most of the poems date from between 1968 and 1972.

  Think of Anything In this collaboration with Robert Creeley, the “Rose of Sharon” refers to a woman named Sharon DeVries, and “Grand Valley” is Grand Valley, Michigan, where Ted and Creeley were participating in a poetry festival.

  Poem (to Tom Clark) Ted’s poetry tended to have a communal focus, even be a communal activity (the collaborations, the dedications and personal references). The short epigrammatic poem is traditionally amenable to this focus. The short poem may also “speak to” a particular person, on the grounds that that person will understand it. “Poem (to Tom Clark),” which is a list of titles by Evelyn Waugh, is dedicated to Clark because he would “get it,” but also because Tom Clark’s name contributes another name to a texture of title and name.