Many Happy Returns

by Ted Berrigan

Some of these poems were published as broadsides; "Living with Chris" was published as a chapbook with illustrations by Joe Brainard (New York: Boke Press, 1968).

Genres: Poetry

48 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

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. After three years in the Army, he finished his college studies at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma, where he received a BA in English in 1959 and fell 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.

A prominent figure in the second generation of the New York School of Poets, Berrigan was peer to Jim Carroll, Anselm Hollo, Alice Notley, Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman, Bernadette Mayer, 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.

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.

Berrigan died on July 4, 1983 at the age of 49. The cause of death was cirrhosis of the liver brought on by hepatitis.

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

In The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan , Many Happy Returns is divided into three parts. Only the second part is named: "Tambourine Life", dedicated to Anne Kepler, who died around the time of the poem's composition (Oct. 1965 - Jan. 1966) -
"Ted took up with a girl named Marge Kepler, who was a cousin of a school friend of mine [...], Anne Kepler, who later came to New York to study and teach flute and who died in 1965 or 1966 in a fire set by an arsonist. She was teaching flute or playing a concert for children, when they were overcome by smoke, and were found huddled in a corner." (Ron Padgett, Ted: A Personal Memoir of Ted Berrigan , pg. 20)
"I remember Anne Kepler. She played the flute. I remember her straight shoulders. I remember her large eyes. Her slightly roman nose. And her full lips. I remember an oil painting I did of her playing the flute. Several years ago she died in a fire giving a flute concert at a children's home in Brooklyn. All the children were saved. There was something about her like white marble." (Joe Brainard, I Remember , pg. 23)
...

Now
in the middle of this
someone I love is dead
 and I don't even know
 "how"
 I thought she belonged to me
How she filled my life when I felt empty!
How she fills me now!
- Tambourine Life, 66

According to the Introduction, Ted Berrigan "perceived time as overlapping and circular; the past was always alive and relevant, and a particular poem might be as repeatable as an individual line or phrase was for him from the time of the composition of The Sonnets onwards" (Alice Notley, Collected Poems , pg. 1). In Many Happy Returns, these "repetitions" occur in the first part, which includes entire poems from Berrigan's The Sonnets (with slight alterations)...

I wake up 11:30 back aching from soft bed Pat
gone to work Ron to class (I never heard a sound)
it's my birthday. 27. I put on birthday
pants birthday shirt go to ADAM's buy a Pepsi for
breakfast come home drink it take a pill
I'm high!
I do three Greek lessons to make
up for cutting class. I read birthday book
(from Joe) on Juan Gris real name: Jose
Vittoriano Gonzales stop in the middle read
all my poems gloat a little over new ballad
quickly skip old sonnets imitations of Shakespeare.
Back to books. I read poems by Auden Spenser Stevens
Pound and Frank O'Hara. I hate books.
I wonder
if Jan or Helen or Babe ever thinks about me. I
wonder if Dave Bearden still dislikes me. I wonder
if people talk about me secretly. I wonder if
I'm too old. I wonder if I'm fooling myself
about pills. I wonder what's in the icebox.
I wonder if Ron or Pat bought any toilet paper
this morning
- Personal Poem #2


I wake up back aching from soft bed Pat
gone to work Ron to class (I
never heard a sound) it's my birthday. I put on
birthday pants birthday shirt go to ADAM's buy a
pepsi for breakfast come home drink it take a pill
I'm high. I do three Greek lessons
to make up for cutting class. I read birthday book
(from Joe) on Juan Gris real name Jose Vittoriano
Gonzales stop in the middle read all
my poems gloat a little over new ballad quickly skip old
sonnets imitations of Shakespeare. Back to books. I read
poems by Auden Spenser Pound Stevens and Frank O'Hara.
I hate books.
I wonder if Jan or Helen or Babe
ever thinks about me. I wonder if Dave Bearden still
dislikes me. I wonder if people talk about me
secretly. I wonder if I'm too old. I wonder if I'm fooling
myself about pills. I wonder what's in the icebox. I wonder
if Ron or Pat bought any toilet paper this morning
- Sonnet LXXVI

One of my favourite poems from the third part makes direct reference to two of Berrigan's fellow New York School poets, Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery...

what sky
out there is between the ailanthuses
a 17th century prison an aardvark
a photograph of Mussolini
a personal letter from Isak Dinesen
written after eating

 can be succeeded by a calm evaluation
of the "intense inane" that surrounds
him:
 it is cool
 I am high
 and happy
 as it turns
 on the earth
 tangles me
 in the air

and between these two passages (from
the only poem 'Biotherm') occurs a me-
diating line which might stand to charac
terize all of Mr. O'Hara's art:

I am guarding it from mess and message. 
 - Frank O'Hara's Questions from "Writers and Issues" by John Ashbery

In my review of The Sonnets , I took issue with Berrigan's misogyny. Although Berrigan's misogyny appears to have improved in Many Happy Returns, but I was irked by a passage that I consider to be racist. I recognize that Berrigan is attempting to make commentary on racism on America, but it is my opinion that this commentary fails. The result of his failure is a passage that succumbs to the racism that Berrigan undoubtedly intended to oppose...

 Hi, Bears!
do you believe in magic?
 good!
 because I am here
 to make a monkey out of you
The best way
to make yrself a monkey
is to jump down
(spin around)
pick a bale of cotton
 if you don't understand
 that
 you will never understand
 your country's history
- Tambourine Life, 18