A Bernadette Mayer Reader

by Bernadette Mayer

“She writes as if Everything were still possible in the work of a lifetime at the coincidence of all the turvy moments. Better that she’s read without a thought to stop. Best so this world is found changed.” ―Clark Coolidge “What a clear, insistent health there is here––as if the so-called world were seriously the point, which it is, and we could actually live in it, which we do. Truly this is the best How To book I've read in years. Bernadette Mayer makes a various world of real people in real times and places, a fact of love and loving use. She has impeccable insight and humor. She is a consummate poet no matter what’s for supper or who eats it. Would that all genius were as generous.” ―Robert Creeley

Genres: Poetry, Womens, 20th Century, New York

148 pages, Paperback

First published May 17, 1992

About the author

Bernadette Mayer (born May 12, 1945) is an American poet, writer, and visual artist associated with both the Language poets and the New York School. Mayer's record-keeping and use of stream-of-consciousness narrative are two trademarks of her writing, though she is also known for her work with form and mythology. In addition to the influence of her textual-visual art and journal-keeping, Mayer's poetry is widely acknowledged as some of the first to speak accurately and honestly about the experience of motherhood. Mayer edited the journal 0 TO 9 with Vito Acconci, and, until 1983, United Artists books and magazines with Lewis Warsh. Mayer taught at the New School for Social Research, where she earned her degree in 1967, and, during the 1970s, she led a number of workshops at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in New York. From 1980 to 1984, Mayer served as director of the Poetry Project, and her influence in the contemporary avant-garde is felt widely, with writers like Kathy Acker, Charles Bernstein, John Giorno, and Anne Waldman having sat in on her workshops.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Ellie Botoman · Rating 4 out of 5]

ugh my 90s poetry mom

[C.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those CLASSIC selections that makes you want to read EVERYTHING the poet has written! Contains some of my favorite poems BY ANY POET, including, "First turn to me...," "Counterhatch," "It Moves Across," and her BRILLIANT sonnet, "You jerk you didn't call me up...." Her influence on many celebrated living poets cannot be stressed enough. She's ONE OF OUR BEST!

CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com

[Fatih · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bütün yapıtlarından birer ikişer metnin yer aldığı bir seçki.
Bu metinlerden çoğunu 60'larda yazmış olması da hayli cesurca. Yalnızca biçimsel özelliklerinden dolayı değil, yazarın özgürlük alanıyla oynadığı, kadının toplum tarafından üretilmiş ahlaki konumunu sarstığı için.
Epey not aldım. Başat temalarını zihnimde yineledim. Umarım çevrilir.

"To make love, turn to page 121.
To die, turn to page 172."

[Charlotte Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bernadette Mayer is one of the most inventive poets I’ve ever read, and while at times the poem doesn’t work at all, other times they do. Her sonnets read like insults to the rules of form and all her work is filled with opinions. It’s hard to read something and hear Mayer in it because it means so many things to have her style.

[Lulu · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good sample of her stuff. Can’t say I enjoyed the early work, but the sonnets I liked!

[Sam Lohmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's all pretty much amazing but the poem I hadn't read before and that blew me away was "Gay Full Story."

Also: "Marie Makes Fun of Me at the Shore," which in its entirety goes:

Marie says
look tiny red spiders
are walking
across the pools
& just as I am writing down
tiny red
spiders are
walking across the pools
She says Mom I can just see it
in your poem it'll say
tiny red spiders are walking
across the pools

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bernadette Mayer is one of my favorite poets but this volume is not very well put together and it's way too short. Little nibbles and you're still hungry and confused about what you ate. Better read after you've read her books one by one and then what's the point? There are some poems in the reader that are otherwise out of print, that's the point.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only because of the short length and production values.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh gosh, why do I continue to read New York School poets? I think I must stop now.

This was a reread -- I read it a million years ago in my freshman honors seminar. My really cool and sexy prof, whom I had a crush on, made us read this collection. I don't like his taste in poetry.

I did like a few things: "Swan Silvertones," "Eve of Easter," "Essay," the excerpt from "Midwinter Day, Part Four," "You Jerk You Didn't Call Me Up," "After Catullus and Horace," and "Two from the Greek Anthology."

"Sonnet"

To perform for you, ask me why, shall I sleep?
You make love so beautifully I don't know what to do
You come and put your university hand
You've thrown yourself off the roof by now

A white dog chases a man around the park
Your school hand your rich hand your suburban hand
Cares if I come I am a woman & we women must both
Have babies & there's my mirror & there's my baby

I want one intent on your form like a room
Prepare food and eat it if the race would survive
The crystal lay like a comparison with wealth to you
I checked and you don't have your car keys

Can I believe her? So
Returned from the dead.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 out of 5

i feel like bernadette just gets me 😊

[Ben Ringel · Rating 5 out of 5]

for class a little while back 😝

[sarah ౨ৎ · Rating 2 out of 5]

My favorite poems: "Marie Makes Fun of Me at the Shore."

[Luke Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wasn’t for me but maybe I’m dumb who knows.

[Cora · Rating 4 out of 5]

4-1/2 stars!

[Pete · Rating 2 out of 5]

i came across "You jerk you didn't call me up" (the one that lovingly invokes cobra commander) last month and thought i needed to immediately know more about the consciousness that created it but i have to say, this is not my bag. i pride myself on having a strange bag that holds many different shapes of objects but bernadette mayer, apart from the one sonnet that involves cobra commander, does not go in my bag. at some point in time i can see how this might have felt bold and grabbed people by the eyelashes but to me it reads like high-toned subtweets. there was a weird moment in time where printing something jagged and spiky on paper felt like a valid and importnat thing but now it just feels like boring yelling? let's not draw too many conclusions

[Joe]

Some of the prose excerpts are bound to feel unsatisfying but the brief notes on the method behind them--"Memory is a journal of the Month of July 1971 based on notes and writings, and a series of 1,116 slides…" "Studying Hunger consists of two lectures culled from the 400-page Studying Hunger Journals, an experiment in recording states of consciousness" points to the range of BM, from translations of Catullus to what Joey A sees as proto conceptualist transcription projects. Particularly interested in the passage in from Memory which nests a smaller experiment within this larger one: "Takes as the stimulus a scrap of brightly colored paper about, say, the size of a penny & make a tiny pencil mark…" And a lot of the other poems are just funny, righteous, and wise.

[C. Varn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outside of Barbara Guest, Bernadette Mayer is other major female voice in the New York School. Whereas Guest poems are arresting and unexpected but very cerebral, Mayer's work has a more earthly intelligence paired with a manic humor. Her poems, however, are less painterly or lyric than Guest's. Indeed, she is defined by play: word play, image play, play in sexuality. Her sonnets pair formality with broken syntax, her lyrics often pair humor with feminine swagger. Mayer's juxtapositions often end with amazing results. This includes examples and excerpts from her early work, including some hard to fine longer poetic works. This is a great introduction to early Bernadette Mayer.

[Alex Garrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thr prose work doesn't really interest me but the 'sonnets' knock me out. This collection is effective in that it makes me completely want more of her work - a sufficent introduction to an apparently brilliant woman. I found her through 'Eve of Easter', which is great, but it's 'Failures in Infinitives' and of course 'You jerk you didn't call me up' that have changed me deeply. The voice is crushingly singular and true; Mayer is exactly the poet I wish to be.

[Jai Wilkins]

I didn’t really think I’d like experimental poetry because it seems so pretentious but figuring out Mayer’s puzzles of methods is so rewarding and produces insightful little bits of truths constructed in strange ways that seems to me to be the essence of poetry

[Tim Atkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are not enough poems about daughters in the world but here are some.

Poems.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

!!!!!!

[diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the second half better. But like it’s all pretty good. Just confusing at times. But isn’t that why we like our post-modernist poets?

3/5 stars