Ted Berrigan

Ted Berrigan Poems

In Africa the wine is cheap, and it is
on St. Mark's Place too, beneath a white moon.
I'll go there tomorrow, dark bulk hooded
against what is hurled down at me in my no hat
...

Winter in the country, Southampton, pale horse
as the soot rises, then settles, over the pictures
The birds that were singing this morning have shut up
I thought I saw a couple kissing, but Larry said no
...

Before I began life this time
I took a crash course in Counter-Intelligence
Once here I signed in, see name below, and added
Some words remembered from an earlier time,
...

We are involved in a transpersonified state
Revolution, which is turning yourself around
...

10 Things I do Every Day
play poker
drink beer
smoke pot
...

In Joe Brainard's collage its white arrow
He is not in it, the hungry dead doctor.
Of Marilyn Monroe, her white teeth white-
...

Wake up high up
frame bent & turned on
Moving slowly
& by the numbers
...

Here I am at 8:08 p.m. indefinable ample rhythmic frame
The air is biting, February, fierce arabesques
on the way to tree in winter streetscape
...

Under a red face, black velvet shyness
Milking an emaciated gaffer. God lies down
Here. Rattling of a shot, heard
From the first row. The president of the United States
...

mind clicks into gear
& fingers clatter over the keyboard
as intricate insights stream
out of your head;
...

Mountains of twine and
Teeth braced against it
Before gray walls. Feet walk
Released by night (which is not to imply
...

'A little loving can solve a lot of things'
She locates two spatial equivalents in
...

It's 8:54 a.m. in Brooklyn it's the 26th of July
and it's probably 8:54 in Manhattan but I'm
in Brooklyn I'm eating English muffins and drinking
Pepsi and I'm thinking of how Brooklyn is
...

wake up
smoke pot
see the cat
love my wife
...

If you stroke a cat about 1,000,000 times, you will
generate enough electricity to light up the largest
American Flag in the world for about one minute.
...

Here comes the man! He's talking a lot
I'm sitting, by myself. I've got
A ticket to ride. Outside is, 'Out to lunch.'
It's no great pleasure, being on the make.
...

The pregnant waitress asks
'Would you like
some more coffee?'
Surprised out of the question
...

It's important not
to back out
of the mirror:
...

When see(k)ing sky you're left with sky, then
'we kill ourselves to propagate our kinde'-We sleep
...

ripped
out of her mind
a marvelous construction
thinking
...

Ted Berrigan Biography

Berrigan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 15, 1934. After high school, he spent a year at Providence College before joining the U.S. Army in 1954 to serve in the Korean War. After three years in the Army, he finished his college studies at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma, where he received a B.A. in English in 1959 and falling just short of the requirements for a M.A. in 1962. Berrigan was married to Sandy Berrigan, also a poet, and they had two children, David Berrigan and Kate Berrigan. He and his second wife the poet Alice Notley were active in the poetry scene in Chicago for several years, then moved to New York City, where he edited various magazines and books. The New York School A prominent figure in the second generation of the New York School of Poets, Berrigan was peer to Jim Carroll, Anselm Hollo, Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman, and Lewis Warsh. He collaborated with Padgett and Joe Brainard on Bean Spasms, a work significant in its rejection of traditional concepts of ownership. Though Berrigan, Padgett, and Brainard all wrote individual poems for the book, and collaborated on many others, no authors were listed for individual poems. In 2005, Ted Berrigan's published and unpublished poetry was published together in a single volume edited by the poet Alice Notley, Berrigan's second wife, and their two sons, Anselm Berrigan – a poet – and Edmund Berrigan, a poet and songwriter. The Sonnets The poet Frank O'Hara called Berrigan's most significant publication, The Sonnets, “a fact of modern poetry.” A telling reflection on the era that produced it, The Sonnets beautifully weaves together traditional elements of the Shakespearean sonnet form with the disjunctive structure and cadence of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Berrigan’s own literary innovations and personal experiences. The product is a composition, in the words of Berrigan’s editor and second wife Alice Notley, “[that is] musical, sexy, and funny.” Berrigan was initially drawn to the sonnet form because of its inherent challenge; in his own words, "the form sort of [stultifies] the whole process [of writing]." The procedure that he ultimately concocted to write The Sonnets is the essence of the work’s novelty and ingenuity. After attempting several sonnets, Berrigan decided to go back through what he had written and take out certain lines, one line from each work until he had six lines. He then went through the poems backwards and took one more line from each until he had accumulated six more lines, twelve lines total. Based on this body of the work, Berrigan knew what the final couplet would be; this process became the basis for The Sonnets. Addressing claims that the method is totally mechanical, Berrigan explains that some of the seventy-seven sonnets came to him "whole," not needing to be pieced together. The poet’s preoccupation with style, his concern for form and his own role as the creator as evinced by The Sonnets pose a challenge to traditional ideas about poetry and signify a fresh and innovative artistic approach. The book recognizes the eternal possibility for invention in a genre seemingly overwhelmed by the success of its traditional forms. By imitating the forms and practices of earlier artists and recreating them to express personal ideas and experiences, Berrigan demonstrates the potential for poetry in his and subsequent generations. As Charles Bernstein succinctly comments, “Part collage, part process writing, part sprung lyric, Ted Berrigan’s The Sonnets remains…one of the freshest and most buoyantly inspired works of contemporary poetry. Reinventing verse for its time, The Sonnets are redolent with possibilities for our own.” Death Berrigan died on July 4, 1983. The cause of death was cirrhosis of the liver.)

The Best Poem Of Ted Berrigan

A Certain Slant Of Sunlight

In Africa the wine is cheap, and it is
on St. Mark's Place too, beneath a white moon.
I'll go there tomorrow, dark bulk hooded
against what is hurled down at me in my no hat
which is weather: the tall pretty girl in the print dress
under the fur collar of her cloth coat will be standing
by the wire fence where the wild flowers grow not too tall
her eyes will be deep brown and her hair styled 1941 American
will be too; but
I'll be shattered by then
But now I'm not and can also picture white clouds
impossibly high in blue sky over small boy heartbroken
to be dressed in black knickers, black coat, white shirt,
buster-brown collar, flowing black bow-tie
her hand lightly fallen on his shoulder, faded sunlight falling
across the picture, mother & son, 33 & 7, First Communion Day, 1941--
I'll go out for a drink with one of my demons tonight
they are dry in Colorado 1980 spring snow.

Ted Berrigan Comments

laurence burris 14 November 2020

this is a poem inspired by ted berrigan an electric saw is being used to cut poem as i read about ted berrigan in the year of the covid-19 virus i am listening to jazz in the year of the covid-19 virus i am reading the tibetan book of the dead ted I need to drink the electric kool-aid ted, there is no place like home

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Terry Jacobus 10 July 2020

I was a friend of Ted and Alice here in Chicago/ We went on some amazing adventures together. From driving range golf, to Female Gay bars, the Kerouac Fest of 82/ where he told the ticket master I was his lover landing me a first row Swami seat, next to Timothy Leary, Gregory Corso, His time spent in Chicago was precious. A street mentor with a Scorpio wit. Blessings TJ-20

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yurdddd 05 April 2019

this poem kinda nice

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