by Alice Notley
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.
