The Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Humanities Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation. The publisher also gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Jamie and David Wolf and the Rosenthal Family Foundation as members of the Publisher’s Circle of the University of California Press Foundation. The Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan Edited by Alice Notley, Anselm Berrigan, and Edmund Berrigan University of California Press Berkeley Los Angeles London University of California Press, one of the most distinguished univer- sity presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institu- tions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2011 by The Regents of the University of California Poems from The Sonnetsby Ted Berrigan, copyright © 2000 by Alice Notley, Literary Executrix of the Estate of Ted Berrigan. Used by per- mission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Berrigan, Ted. [Poems. Selections] The selected poems of Ted Berrigan / edited by Alice Notley, Anselm Berrigan, and Edmund Berrigan. â p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn: 978-0-520-26683-4 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn: 978-0-520-26684-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) I. Notley, Alice 1945– II. Berrigan, Anselm. III. Berrigan, Edmund, 1974– IV. Title. PS3552.E74A65 2011 811'.54— dc22 2010035064 Manufactured in the United States of America 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on Natures Book, which contains 50% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper). Contents xiii Acknowledgments 1 Introduction by Anselm Berrigan and Edmund Berrigan 11 People of the Future 11 Doubts 12 String of Pearls 13 Words for Love 14 For You 14 Personal Poem #2 15 Personal Poem #9 From The Sonnets 17 I 17 II 18 III 19 Poem in the Traditional Manner 19 From a Secret Journal 20 Penn Station 21 XV 21 XXIII 22 XXVIII 22 XXX 23 XXXI 24 XXXVII 24 XXXVIII 25 XLI 25 XLVI 26 L 27 LII 27 LV 28 LXV 29 LXX 29 LXXII 30 LXXIV 31 LXXVII 31 LXXXII 32 LXXXVII 33 LXXXVIII n 34 The Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford 42 Rusty Nails 46 A Personal Memoir of Tulsa, Oklahoma / 1955– 60 48 Tambourine Life 78 Living with Chris 79 Bean Spasms 86 Many Happy Returns 89 Things to Do in New York City 90 10 Things I Do Every Day 91 Resolution 91 American Express 93 February Air 94 Anti-War Poem 95 Dial-A-Poem 95 Poem (of morning, Iowa City . ) 96 London Air 100 Peace 101 Today in Ann Arbor 105 Ann Arbor Song 106 People Who Died 107 Telegram 107 In the Wheel 107 30 108 interstices 109 bent 110 Heroin 111 March 17th, 1970 112 Wind 113 Lady 114 Things to Do in Providence 119 Three Sonnets and a Coda for Tom Clark 121 Something Amazing Just Happened 123 Seriousness 123 To an Eggbeater 123 Peter Rabbit came in . 124 slack 125 L’oeil 125 Ezra Pound: . 125 The Light 125 Tell It Like It Is 126 Laments 126 Shaking Hands 126 Things to Do on Speed 129 Landscape with Figures (Southampton) 130 Ophelia 131 Frank O’Hara 132 Crystal 132 Chinese Nightingale 133 Wrong Train 134 Wishes 134 I Used to Be but Now I Am 135 The Complete Prelude 137 Paul Blackburn 137 New Personal Poem From Easter Monday 139 Chicago Morning 140 The End 140 Newtown 141 Soviet Souvenir 142 Old-fashioned Air 143 L.G.T.T.H. 144 Peking 144 From A List of the Delusions of the Insane, What They Are Afraid Of 145 Chicago English Afternoon 146 Sister Moon 147 An Orange Clock 147 Easter Monday 148 So Going Around Cities 150 Boulder 151 Carrying a Torch 152 Work Postures 152 Excursion & Visitation 153 Whitman in Black 153 Southwest 154 From the House Journal 155 My Tibetan Rose n 157 By Now 157 In the 51st State 158 Red Shift 160 Around the Fire 161 Cranston Near the City Line 162 Coda : Song 163 Postcard from the Sky 163 Last Poem 164 Small Role Felicity 165 44th Birthday Evening, at Harris’s 166 Look Fred, You’re a Doctor, My Problem Is Something Like This: 167 Part of My History 168 The Morning Line 169 After Peire Vidal, & Myself 170 Round About Oscar 171 Thin Breast Doom 173 Memories Are Made of This From A Certain Slant of Sunlight 174 Poem (“Yea, though I walk . .”) 174 You’ll do good if you play it like you’re . 175 A Certain Slant of Sunlight 175 Blue Galahad 176 The Einstein Intersection 176 People Who Change Their Names 177 In the Land of Pygmies & Giants 178 Angst 178 4 Metaphysical Poems 178 “Poets Tribute to Philip Guston” 179 Blue Herring 179 O Captain, My Commander, I Think 180 Ode 180 Sunny, Light Winds 181 What a Dump or, Easter 182 My Life & Love 183 Anselm 184 Treason of the Clerks 184 Dinner at George & Katie Schneeman’s 184 Pandora’s Box, an Ode 185 Transition of Nothing Noted as Fascinating 186 Mutiny! 186 Upside Down 187 Paris, Frances 187 Windshield 187 Stars & Stripes Forever 188 I Heard Brew Moore Say, One Day 188 In Your Fucking Utopias 189 Tough Cookies 190 Skeats and the Industrial Revolution 190 Natchez 191 Let No Willful Fate Misunderstand 191 To Sing the Song, That Is Fantastic 192 Interstices 193 Give Them Back, Who Never Were 194 Via Air n 195 Robert (Lowell) 195 Villonnette 195 Don Quixote & Sancho Panza 196 This Will Be Her Shining Hour 203 Chronology 209 Notes by Alice Notley 229 Index of Titles and First Lines This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publishers of col- lections of Ted Berrigan’s poems: “C” Press, Kulchur Press, Grove Press, Corinth Books, Cape Goliard Press, Frontward Books, The Yellow Press, United Artists, Blue Wind Press, Clown War, Little Light Books, Am Here Books/Immediate Editions, O Books, and Penguin USA (which has given permission for publication from The Sonnets). Our selection is dependent on this lovely publishing history, culminating more recently in the publica- tion of The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan by the University of California Press. We would also like to thank Rachel Berchten and the staff at the press who participated in the publication of the present volume. xiii This page intentionally left blank Introduction During a sonnet workshop that Ted Berrigan conducted at The Poetry Proj- ect at St. Mark’s Church in New York City in February 1979, Ted noted that when he first began studying poetry independently he was drawn to Shakespeare’s sonnets for their wit, brevity, and in particular their diction. He recognized the possibility of a poetic model in those works, and this was significant in that he was initially drawn to Ezra Pound’s Cantos but didn’t feel he possessed the store of historical data necessary to fill such sprawling works. He followed these remarks by reading Shakespeare’s sonnet “XCIV” (“They that have the power to hurt and will do none”) which contains the lines “They are the lords and owners of their faces / Others but stewards of their excellence,” lines that Ted appropriated and altered three years later in his poem “In the Land of Pygmies & Giants”: Anselm!â Edmund! â Get me an ashtray! No one in this house In any way is any longer sick! â â And I am the Lord, and owner â ââ of their faces. â â They call me, Dad! One (or two in this case) might have memories of these lines as simul- taneous command and exhortation from the next room, which raises the curious question of what came first: the speaking or writing of the poem? And since Ted, as so often was the case in those days, was lying in bed awake, writing, reading, talking, and smoking while we played in the front room of our lower Manhattan railroad apartment, couldn’t the poem have been written and spoken at once: an example of a practical, domestic work- ing method, of getting it in the ear and on the page while also getting the sorely needed ashtray? Given that Ted made use of lines that might have 1 been spoken, sung, overheard, written, and read—by himself or, literally, anyone else—it’s not out of the question to think so, nor is it unusual to come across a high-end Elizabethan utterance mixed in rather easily with some affectionate and gently comic spoken diction of the late twentieth- century variety. The necessity of segregating manners of speaking, be they high or low, simply did not exist for Ted, whose conception of what materi- als might be necessary or amusing within a poem was unbridled (see the one-two combo of “The Complete Prelude,” a no-frills condensation of Wordsworth, and “Paul Blackburn,” a brief song-made-of-facts written to mark the imminence of that poet’s death, for a coincidental illustration of this point). “In the Land of Pygmies & Giants” appears toward the beginning of A Certain Slant of Sunlight, the last book Ted completed before his relatively early death at the age of 48 in 1983.