To Hell With Sleep

by Anselm Berrigan

Anselm Berrigan gives us a fresh dose of his discordant mind music. To Hell With Sleep was written by the poet in the first months after the birth of his daughter, mostly during brief periods of time when he was half-awake or less so, letting the poetry be unthought within its vehicle of eight seven-line slanting stanzas per session, of which there were nine. The impulse driving the writing was to let sounds-turning-toward-words follow from the intensified state of consciousness the arrival of this baby initiated. No prescience, reflection, computer tricks, formal appropriation, or plotting of any kind was used in the in the writing of this work. Joy, fear, humor, sound, bafflement and recognition-in-exchange-for-recognition were the instruments.

Genres: Poetry

27 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2009

About the author

Anselm Berrigan is the author of four books of poetry, including Free Cell, Some Notes on My Programming, Zero Star Hotel, and Notes from Irrelevance, and is the co-editor with Alice Notley and Edmund Berrigan of Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan. He is the poetry editor for The Brooklyn Rail, and formerly served as Artistic Director of The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church. He lives and works in his hometown of New York City.

Reviews

[C.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVE IT!
I've created a (Soma)tic Reading Enhancement for it, which you can see at the ATTENTION SPAN 2009 List here: http://thirdfactory.wordpress.com/200...

THIS IS AN AMAZING YEAR FOR POETRY!
CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com

-------------------------------------

I don't understand people rating this book and NOT wanting to talk about it. Well I think this book deserves to be told why it's five stars. (let's see if GOODREADS allows us poets to have spacing):



...to be a panic, a
history of connection so
felt as to be vulgar, in
formal obsession, not live
for what will never be,
dear question, an anything.



Now I'm not going to know until after this review is published whether or not the spacing is allowed, but in case it's NOT (probably not, those Goodreads folks don't seem to give a damn), the entire book is like a lightning bolt coming down at the reader. This small excerpt above is from "In a box in a box in a" and the left margin zags with the lightning of the poem, with the light of the reader coming into his words. It's the kind of book where you start to feel OH SHIT THIS POET TAKES ME SERIOUSLY like there's a place for the reader in there. Because there fucking is.

I've read the book several times now, and the last bit in the book, "Unknown knowns bind" could be set to some delicious thrashing drums and guitars:

What's a lapel? What's
a threshold, precious?
I prefer aquadelegates.
I prefer them to still
be in the running for
America's Next Top
Model. Slowly I turned

toward the ornamentation
of a by-gone era, singing
of a guitarosaur's missing
legs, a side order of carrion
the arrogance of asking for
aid, the body count's shadow
work, a miniature transit.



YEAH, YIKES, IS THAT WHAT YOU SAID? I heard you, and yes, me too! It's a whole book, you should read it, not just these snippets, you'll like it.

CAConrad
http://advancedELVIS.blogspot.com

[Molly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I respect the process, though it didn't hold me.

Though I do like the idea of taking the exercise and translating it. The tadpole is due in exactly one week. And we have a toddler. The combination could trill all over the place. Something like this might make me sane.

who's asking for a red- / lipped star-speckled clam / tilted on its side to befriend / a kid free of language? (10)

Kettle chips vanish, seed / all over the floor, ravenous (10)

Tiny person duels / my temper (11)

awake, smiling toothlessly / at our anti-lyric non-concepts (20)