Selected Poems

by Ted Berrigan

A collection of poems by a major figure of the New York poetry scene in the 1960s chronicles everyday life in the city and offers selections from his 1967 work, "The Sonnets"

Genres: Poetry, The United States Of America

160 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1994

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

[Abraham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I didn't much enjoy this, I think part of the problem might be the broad selection of the book making for a very inconsistent read. The other might be that I don't love his poetry.

I was impressed to see that, in a way, his work really preceded and predicted the James Tates and the Dean Youngs of today.

[Kerri Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this along the Oregon coast, with salt in my hair and sand everywhere, and in California, in between blissful stretches of running underneath the tallest trees I'd ever seen, and I finished it in a tent in Lassen Volcanic National Park with happy aches in my legs and the taste of fire-side dinner still on my lips, and what I'm mostly trying to say is: I enjoyed every page of it.

[Paolo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, and Ted's poetry, in general, invited me to write the kind of poetry I should have been writing all along: one that's irreverent, adoring, bromantic, punny, unoriginal, high, oblique, restless, direct, familiar, corny, awake, overheard, bruised, and awestruck. I bought the last copy at Zebra Books on Homer Street (in B.C.), then caught the new print of Kurosawa's 'Seven Samurai' at the Cinematheque around the corner. I managed to read Alice Notley's introduction, as well as the book's first poem, 'Words for Love', right before the room went dark. The rest, as they say, is history. Thank you, Ted.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the Berrigan book I carry for travel whether to another city or just to work or for errands. I love many of Berrigan's poems and his are books I return to. ButI do have to say that his good poems (IMO) are only at most a quarter of the poems he published. The other three quarters are dull, incoherent for no reason, and self-indulgent. But I will always admire the way he (and his wife Alice Notley) devoted his life to poetry and made it absolutely central to his life which meant a life of poverty. I don't admireso much the meth use, the shop-lifting, and so on, but he wouldn't have been Berrigan without them I suppose.

[Mark Folse · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sometimes difficult but fascinating book.

[Misha · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not my style