by Alice Notley
Sotere Torregian (1941– ) Poet.
Tony Towle (1939– ) Poet.
Tom Veitch (1941– ) Novelist, poet, comic book writer.
Anne Waldman (1945– ) Poet, editor, anthologist, teacher, performer, New York and Boulder poetry community figure.
Larry Walker Fiction writer, friend of Ted’s in Tulsa.
Lewis Warsh (1944– ) Poet, novelist, memoirist, editor, publisher, teacher.
Philip Whalen (1923–2002) Poet, novelist, Zen abbot.
Megan Williams Upstairs neighbor of Ted’s in New York in the late 70s and early 80s. Dress designer.
Jeff Wright (1951– ) Poet, editor, publisher.
Credits
The text of The Sonnets is reproduced with the permission of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. (New York: Penguin Books, 2001). Memorial Day is reproduced with the permission of its co-author, Anne Waldman. A Certain Slant of Sunlight is reproduced with the permission of Leslie Scalapino and O Books (Oakland, Calif.: O Books, 1988). All other poems are used with the permission of Alice Notley, executor of the estate of Ted Berrigan. The photograph of Ted Berrigan is reproduced with the permission of the photographer, Lorenz Gude. The cover art by George Schneeman is reproduced with the permission of the artist.
Index of Titles and First Lines
The index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below
Titles appear in roman type. First lines appear in italics.
(Another has)
(Ezra Pound: A Witness)
(Keep my)
(Peter Rabbit came in)
(With)
(You’ll do good if you play it like you’re)
1. Le Marteau Sans Maitre : Pierre Boulez (Odyssey 32 16
(2) photographs of Anne
3 Pages
4 Metaphysical Poems
5 New Sonnets: A Poem
7 Things I Do in the Hotel Chelsea
9:16 & 2:44 & 25 Minutes to 5
10 Things I Do Every Day
10 Things I do Every Day
10 years of boot
XIII
20th Century man strives toward the unfinished-machine exalted state
30 (The fucking enemy shows up)
36th Birthday Afternoon
43 (no strange countries)
44th Birthday Evening, at Harris’s
80th Congress
a band of musicians: up tight
A Boke
A Certain Slant of Sunlight
A colorful river of poetry drives forward
A City Winter
A darksome tiger
A Dream
A drop of boo the wounded ham
a faint smile appears
A few rape men or kill coons so I bat them
À la Recherche du Temps Perdu
A Letter
A Letter from Dick Gallup
A Little American Feedback
“A little loving can solve a lot of things”
A lovely body gracefully is nodding
A master square weaver, one’s favoured medium
A Meeting at the Bridge
a metal fragrant white
A natural bent, no doubt
A New Old Song
A new old song continues. He worked into the plane
a nose, heavy, square, & massive
A Note from Yang-Kuan
A person can lie around on an uncrowded beach
A Personal Memoir of Tulsa, Oklahoma / 1955–60
A Quiet Dream
A Religious Experience
A Reply to the Fragile
A Spanish Tragedy
A sparrow whispers in my loins
A True Story
A woman’s love
(About Emily Dickinson)
Above his head clanged
Abraham & Sarah
According
Acid
Acid
Across the trolley tracks
After Breakfast
After Peire Vidal, & Myself
After Petrarch
After the first death there is plenty
Ah, Bernie, to think of you alone, suffering
“Ah Fitz but we are profound
Air
Air Conditioning
All A-Glower Went My Love Riding
All my friends in the
“All things considered, it’s a gentle & undemanding
Allen & Peter, heads close together, Allen
Allen Ginsberg’s “Shining City”
Ambiguity
American Express
Amityville Times
Amsterdam
An Autobiography in 5 Parts
An Ex-Athlete, Not Dying
An Observation
An Orange Clock
An UnSchneeman
and I am lost in the ringing elevator
& so I took the whole trip
“And the nights shall be filled with music
And then one morning to waken perfect-faced (Interstices)
And then one morning to waken perfect-faced (Sonnet XXXI)
Andy Butt was drunk in the Parthenon
Angst
Ann Arbor Elegy
Ann Arbor Song
Anne
Anne Lesley Waldman says, No Fossil Fuels
Anne reads her Troubadour poem
“Another has
Another New Old Song
Anselm
Anselm! Edmund!
Anselm Hollo
Anselm is sleeping; Edmund is feverish, &
Anti-War Poem
“Antlers have grown out the top of my shaggy head”
Apollinaire Oeuvres Poetiques
Apologies to Val & Tom
“appropriately named Beauty, has just been a star
April in the Morning, with Anne
Around the Fire
As Usual
Ass-Face
At a quarter past six he sat & said “where’s your brother? pull
At 80 Langton Street (S.F.)
At last I’m a real poet I’ve written a
At Loma Linda
Aubade
Autobiography
Autobiography
Autumn
Autumn is fun
Autumn’s Day
Avec la Mécanique sous les Palmes
Babe Rainbow
Baby sighs prepositions put the books back nights. As usual I
Back in the Old Place
Back to dawn by police word
Bad Teeth
Bad Timing
banging around in a cigarette she isn’t “in love” (Sonnet XLI)
banging around in a cigarette she isn’t “in love” (Sonnet LVI)
Baltic Stanzas
Bardolino
Be awake mornings. See light spread across the lawn
Bean Spasms
bear with me
bear with me
Beautiful girl
Beautiful Poem
Beauty, I wasn’t born
became in Alamogordo. Then the blast-
Beer in bed, &
Before I began life this time
Before I was alive
Beginning with a memory of childhood New York’s lovely weather
bent
bent
Besa
Beware of Benjamin Franklin, he is totally lacking in grace
Biddy Basketball
Black & White Magic
Black brothers to get happy
Black Power
blank mind part
Blindfold shores leaving sad
Blue
Blue Galahad
Blue Herring
Blue Targets
Blue Tilt
Bolinas
borrow 50 from George
Boulder
Brigadoon
Broth
er and sister departed
Buddha on the Bounty
Buddhist Text
Buenos Aires
“But & then at that time
But that dream . . . oh, hell
Butchie’s Tune
By Now
Bye-Bye Jack
Caesar
Caesar’s ghost must be above suspicion
Can’t cut it (night)
Canzone
Carrying a Torch
Category
Cento: A Note on Philosophy
C’est automne qui revient
Chair
Che Guevara’s Cigars
Chicago April Morning: Snow
Chicago English Afternoon
Chicago Morning
Childe of the House
Chinese Nightingale
Christmas Card (for Barry & Carla)
Christmas Card (O little town of Bethlehem)
Christmas in July, or
(clarity! clarity!) a semblance of motion, omniscience
Climbed by Grandma We Stand on Morning’s Hill
Clown
Coda : Song
Coffee And
Cold rosy dawn in New York City
Come to Chicago
Communism
Compleynt to the Muse
Conceived in Hate
Congratulations
Connecticut
Contemporary Justice
Conversation
Corporal Pellegrini
Corridors of Blood
Cowboy Song
Cranston Near the City Line
Crash
Craze Man Wiliiker
Creature
Crossroads
Crystal
DNA
“Dear Chris
Dear Management’s beautiful daughters
Dear Marge, hello. It is 5:15 a.m. (Night Letter)
Dear Marge, hello. It is 5:15 a.m. (Sonnet XVIII)
Dear Margie, hello. It is 5:15 a.m. (Sonnet II)
Dear Ron: Keats was a baiter of bears etc.
Dear Ron: hello. Your name is now a household name
December
Déjà Vu
Der Asra
Despair farms a curse, slackness
Dial-A-Poem
Dice Riders
Dick Gallup (Birthday)
Did you see me that night
Dinner at George & Katie Schneeman’s
Dinosaur Love
Discussing Max Beerbohm
“Do you
Do You Know Rene?
Don Quixote & Sancho Panza
Don’t call me “Berrigan”
Don’t Forget Anger
Doubts
Down Moon River
Down on Me
Down on Mission
Dreamland
Dreams, aspirations of presence! Innocence gleaned
Dreamy-eyed is how you get
Dresses for Alice
dying now, or already dead
Each tree stands alone in stillness
Easter Monday
Easy Living
“Eileen” (detail)
El Greco
Elysium
Entrance
Epithalamion
Erasable Picabia
Evelyn Waugh’s Prayer
Evensong
Every day back & forth
Every day when the sun comes up
Every man-jack boot-brain slack-jaw son of a chump
Everybody is not so clever as you. You are cleverer than I
Everybody Seemed So Laid Back in the Park
Everything good is from the Indian
Everywhere we went we paid the price, endurement
Excursion & Visitation
Ezra Pound: A Witness
Farewell Address
Fauna Time. See The Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford
Feb. 11, 1982. Last night reading Permanent War
February Air
Fern
fiction appears) for I and only one per-
Fine Mothers
Flame & Fury
Flower Portrait
Fluke Holland: —The Tennessee Third
Flying United
For a brief time Acting Chief
For Annie Rooney
For Bernie
For love of Megan I danced all night
For my sins I live in the city of New York
For Robt. Creeley
For Rosina
For You
Found Picasso
Four Gates to the City
Fragment
Frances
Francis à Bientôt
Francis Marion nudges himself gently into the big blue sky
Frank O’Hara
Frank O’Hara’s Question from “Writers and Issues” by John Ashbery (An Autobiography in 5 Parts)
Frank O’Hara’s Question from “Writers and Issues” by John Ashbery (Many Happy Returns)
Frog sees dog. log?
From “Anti-Memoirs”
From A List of the Delusions of the Insane, What They Are Afraid Of
From a Secret Journal
from Memoirs
From Sketches of Amsterdam
From The Art of the Sonnet
From the Execution Position
From the House Journal
Fuck Communism
Further Definitions (Waft)
Futile rhapsodies resound from hotly
Gainsborough
Galaxies
Games
Gay doormen face a severe shortage of cocaine
George’s Coronation Address
Geranium’s
get, in the complexity of our present
“Get a job at the railroad”
Get Away from Me You Little Fool
Get your ass in gear
Giants in the sky; roses in streams that castle rocks
Give Them Back, Who Never Were
Go
Go in Manhattan
Go fly a kite he writes
God: perhaps, “The being worshipped. To
Going to Chicago
Going up, slowly, I, slowly
Good Evening, ladies, and all you hungry children
Goodbye House, 24 Huntington, one block past Hertel
Grace After a Meal
Grace to be born and live as variously as possible
Great Stories of the Chair
gray his head goes his feet green
Green (grass)
Green Tide; behind, pink against blue
Grey Morning
Guevara had noticed me smoking, and remarked that of course I would
Gus
Hall of Mirrors
Harum-scarum haze on the Pollock streets (Sonnet XIX)
Harum-scarum haze on the Pollock streets (Sonnet XLVI)
He
He
He called his Mama
He eats of the fruits of the great Speckle
He eats toenails
He is guardian to the small kitten
He made coffee
He never listened while friends talked
He never listened while friends talked. He worked
He wandered and kept on wandering. Bar-Mitzvah
He was one of the last of the Western Bandits
He was ugly
He was wounded & so
Head Lice
Head of lettuce, glass of chocolate milk
Heart of my heart
Hearts
“Hello”
Hello
Hello, Sunshine
Heloise
Here
Here comes the Man
Here comes the man! He’s talking a lot
Here I am again
Here I am at 8:08 p.m. indefinable ample rhythmic frame
Here I Live
Heroin
He’s literally a shambles as a person
High School windows are always broken
His piercing pince-nez. Some di
m frieze (5 New Sonnets: A Poem)
His piercing pince-nez. Some dim frieze (Sonnet I)
Hitch on here
Hollywood
Homage to Beaumont Bruestle
Homage to Mayakofsky
Homecoming
Honey
How strange to be gone in a minute
How strange to be gone in a minute! A man
How sweet the downward sweep of your prickly thighs
How terrible a life is
How to Get to Canada. See Three Poems: Going to Canada
How We Live in the Jungle
Huge collapsed Mountain Enters from Stage Right
I am ambiguity
I am asleep
I am closing my window. Tears silence the wind
I am in bed
I am kinks
I am lonesome after mine own kind—the
I am the man yr father & Mum was
I am thinking of my old houses
I am trying very hard to be Here
I appear in the kitchen
I belong for what it is worth
I belong here, I was born
I cannot reach it
I can’t sleep walking through walls
I Dreamt I See Three Ladies in a Tree
“I gather up my tics & tilts, my stutters & imaginaries
I go in &
I go on loving you
I had a really sad childhood, lived mostly alone
I had angst
I had this dream
“I have always been emotional beyond belief, so
I have been here too many times before
I have no brain
I have these great dreams, like
I hear walking in my legs
I Heard Brew Moore Say, One Day
I hope to go
“I know what evening means, and doves, and I have seen
“I know where I’m going
I like First Avenue
I like to beat people up
I love all the girls
I love you much
I met her in The Stone Age
I never said I was right, or wrong
“I order you to operate. I was not made to suffer”
“I Remember”
I remember painting “I Hate Ted Berrigan” in big black letters
I saw you first in half-darkness
I sit on fat
I stand at the dock in judgement
I stand by the window
I take him
I tried to put the coffee back together
I Used to Be but Now I Am
I used to be inexorable
I wake up back aching from soft bed Pat
I wake up 11:30 back aching from soft bed Pat
I was looking at the words he
I watch the road: I am a line-
I won’t be at this boring poetry reading
“I wrote these songs when
I’d been
I’d like to show you something. Please look at it
If by my hasty words I gave offence
If he bites you he’s friendly
If I didn’t feel so
If I don’t love you I
If someone doesn’t help me soon I
Ikonostasis
I’ll yell at these men who pass