Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Encyclopedia
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge is a contemporary poet. Winner of two American Book Award
s, her work is often associated with the Language School
, the poetry of the New York School
, phenomenology, and visual art. She is married to the painter Richard Tuttle
, with whom she has frequently collaborated.
, Reed
, and Columbia University
. After receiving her M.F.A. from Columbia in 1974, she settled in rural northern New Mexico, which has remained her primary residence ever since.
After receiving her degree, Berssenbrugge became active in the multicultural poetry movement of the 1970s along with her good friend Leslie Marmon Silko
as well as Ishmael Reed
, theater director Frank Chin
, and political activist Kathleen Chang. Berssenbrugge taught at the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe, where she co-founded the internal literary journal Tyuonyi.
Traveling frequently to New York City, Berssenbrugge became engaged in the rich cultural flourishing of the abstract art movement, and was influenced by New York School poets John Ashbery
, Barbara Guest
, James Schuyler
and Anne Waldman
, and then the Language poets, including Charles Bernstein
, as well as artist Susan Bee
.
She currently sits on the contributing editorial board to the literary journal Conjunctions
.
to produce unexpected juxtapositions. Her work is also known for its exploration of the complexities of cultural and political identity, an interest informed by her own experience of cultural and linguistic displacement.
The book contains the following poems:
Group 1: Aegean; Finn Song To the Bear Ghosts; Bog; Book of the Dead, Prayer; El Bosco; Spirit; Hopi Basketweaver Song; Beetle is Born, Lives ...; Los Sangre de Cristos; In Bhaudanath; Snow Mountains; Red Backs & Autumn Leaves ...; and Ghost.
Group 2: Old Man Let's Go Fishing In ...; Travelling [sic] Through Your Country; Propeller Sleep; Fish & Swimmers & Lonely Birds ...; Spaces are Death; The Second Moment; The Third Moment; Perpetual Motions; Leaving Your Country; The Old Know By Midsummer; and Abortion.
Group 3: Written Before Easter in New York; Chronicle; Tracks; On The Winter Solstice; Blossom; Hudson Ice Floes; Poor Mouse; Sky; and March Wind.
Group 4: The play, One, Two Cups.
Group 1: Chronicle.
Group 2: The Membrane; Rabbit, Hair, Leaf; On the Mountain with the Deer; The Suspension Bridge; Numbers of the Date Become the Names of Birds; Spring Street Bar; Heat Wave; The Intention of Two Rivers; For The Tails of Comets; and Sleep.
Group 3: The Field for Blue Corn; The Reservoir; The White Beaver; Breaking the Circumference; A Deer Listening; You and You; and Goodbye, Goodbye.
Group 4: The Scientific Method (for Walter); Walter Calls It a Dream Screen; The Constellation Quilt; Run-off and Silt; The Translation of Verver; and Commentary.
Group 5: Tail.
Group 1: The Blue Taj; Tan Tien; Alakanak Break-Up; Texas; Duration of Water; The Star Field; and Chinese Space.
Group 2: Jealousy; Recitative; The Carmelites; The Margin; Naturalism; and Fog.
Group 3: War Insurance; Empathy; The Swan; Forms of Politeness; and Honeymoon.
. Forty copies were produced by Universal Limited Art Editions from a maquette made by Berssenbrugge and Smith. The Kelsey Street Press edition, a facsimile of the original book, was limited to 2,000 copies, with the first 60 signed and numbered. The book contains a single poem: Endocrinology.
American Book Award
The American Book Award was established in 1978 by the Before Columbus Foundation. It seeks to recognize outstanding literary achievement by contemporary American authors, without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre...
s, her work is often associated with the Language School
Language school
A language school is a school where one studies a foreign language. Classes at a language school are usually geared towards, but not limited to, communicative competence in a foreign language...
, the poetry of the New York School
New York School
The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City...
, phenomenology, and visual art. She is married to the painter Richard Tuttle
Richard Tuttle
Richard Dean Tuttle is an American postminimalist artist known for his small, subtle, intimate works. His art makes use of scale and line.- Biography :...
, with whom she has frequently collaborated.
Life
Berssenbrugge was born in Beijing to Chinese and Dutch-American parents, but grew up in the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. She is of Dutch, Austrian, and Chinese descent. Her brother, Richard, is an engineer and Japanese calligrapher and sister, Annie, is a doctor. She was educated at BarnardBarnard College
Barnard College is a private women's liberal arts college and a member of the Seven Sisters. Founded in 1889, Barnard has been affiliated with Columbia University since 1900. The campus stretches along Broadway between 116th and 120th Streets in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough...
, Reed
Reed College
Reed College is a private, independent, liberal arts college located in southeast Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus located in Portland's Eastmoreland neighborhood, featuring architecture based on the Tudor-Gothic style, and a forested canyon wilderness...
, and Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. After receiving her M.F.A. from Columbia in 1974, she settled in rural northern New Mexico, which has remained her primary residence ever since.
After receiving her degree, Berssenbrugge became active in the multicultural poetry movement of the 1970s along with her good friend Leslie Marmon Silko
Leslie Marmon Silko
Leslie Marmon Silko is a Native American writer of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, and one of the key figures in the second wave of what Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance...
as well as Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Scott Reed is an American poet, essayist, and novelist. A prominent African-American literary figure, Reed is known for his satirical works challenging American political culture, and highlighting political and cultural oppression.Reed has been described as one of the most controversial...
, theater director Frank Chin
Frank Chin
Frank Chin is an American author and playwright.- Life and career :Frank Chin was born in Berkeley, California, but was raised to the age of six by a retired Vaudeville couple in Placerville, California. At six his mother brought him back to the San Francisco Bay Area to live in Oakland Chinatown...
, and political activist Kathleen Chang. Berssenbrugge taught at the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe, where she co-founded the internal literary journal Tyuonyi.
Traveling frequently to New York City, Berssenbrugge became engaged in the rich cultural flourishing of the abstract art movement, and was influenced by New York School poets John Ashbery
John Ashbery
John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...
, Barbara Guest
Barbara Guest
Barbara Guest née Barbara Ann Pinson was an American poet and prose stylist. Guest first gained recognition as a member of the first generation New York School of poetry....
, James Schuyler
James Schuyler
James Marcus Schuyler was an American poet whose awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1980 collection The Morning of the Poem...
and Anne Waldman
Anne Waldman
Anne Waldman is an American poet.Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the “Outrider” experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activist....
, and then the Language poets, including Charles Bernstein
Charles Bernstein
Charles Bernstein is an American poet, theorist, editor, and literary scholar. Bernstein holds the Donald T. Regan Chair in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is one of the most prominent members of the Language poets . In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the American...
, as well as artist Susan Bee
Susan Bee
Susan Bee is a painter, editor, and book artist who lives in New York City. She has had six solo shows at A.I.R. Gallery in New York, and has published six artist's books with Granary Books...
.
She currently sits on the contributing editorial board to the literary journal Conjunctions
Conjunctions
Conjunctions, is a biannual American literary journal based at Bard College. It was founded in 1981 and is currently edited by Bradford Morrow....
.
Poetry
Berssenbrugge's poetry is known for its mix of philosophical meditation and personal experience, and for moving quickly between abstract language and the concrete particulars of immediate perception. Her poems often contain subtle shifts of grammar and perspective, and Berssenbrugge often works with collageCollage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
to produce unexpected juxtapositions. Her work is also known for its exploration of the complexities of cultural and political identity, an interest informed by her own experience of cultural and linguistic displacement.
Fish Souls
Fish Souls is Berssenbrugge's first published collection of poems. It was published by Greenwood Press in 1971. Only 100 numbered copies were published. Information about this volume is scarce.Summits Move With the Tide
Summits Move With the Tide, subtitled (on the cover of the second edition) Poems and a Play, is Berssenbrugge's second collection of poems. It was published by the Greenfield Review Press in 1974, and later in 1982. The acknowledgments page indicates that some of the poems previously appeared in First Issue, Intro 3, East-West Journal, Cathedral, Ash Tree, Gidra, and Greenwood Press. In contrast to her later books, most the poems in the collection are short, with only a few carrying over to new pages. Additionally, only two poems are broken into numbered stanzas, a format Berssenbrugge would use in later poems. The poems in the collection are organized into four groups: three groups of poems, and one play, One, Two Cups.The book contains the following poems:
Group 1: Aegean; Finn Song To the Bear Ghosts; Bog; Book of the Dead, Prayer; El Bosco; Spirit; Hopi Basketweaver Song; Beetle is Born, Lives ...; Los Sangre de Cristos; In Bhaudanath; Snow Mountains; Red Backs & Autumn Leaves ...; and Ghost.
Group 2: Old Man Let's Go Fishing In ...; Travelling [sic] Through Your Country; Propeller Sleep; Fish & Swimmers & Lonely Birds ...; Spaces are Death; The Second Moment; The Third Moment; Perpetual Motions; Leaving Your Country; The Old Know By Midsummer; and Abortion.
Group 3: Written Before Easter in New York; Chronicle; Tracks; On The Winter Solstice; Blossom; Hudson Ice Floes; Poor Mouse; Sky; and March Wind.
Group 4: The play, One, Two Cups.
Random Possession
Random Possession was published by I. Read Books in 1982. On the contents page the poems are separated spatially into five unnumbered groups (with only the first three listed on the contents page). The pagination bears out the scheme, with one empty page between the groups. The book contains the following poems:Group 1: Chronicle.
Group 2: The Membrane; Rabbit, Hair, Leaf; On the Mountain with the Deer; The Suspension Bridge; Numbers of the Date Become the Names of Birds; Spring Street Bar; Heat Wave; The Intention of Two Rivers; For The Tails of Comets; and Sleep.
Group 3: The Field for Blue Corn; The Reservoir; The White Beaver; Breaking the Circumference; A Deer Listening; You and You; and Goodbye, Goodbye.
Group 4: The Scientific Method (for Walter); Walter Calls It a Dream Screen; The Constellation Quilt; Run-off and Silt; The Translation of Verver; and Commentary.
Group 5: Tail.
The Heat Bird
In The Heat Bird, Berssenbrugge shifted to a long-verse format. The book contains only four poems, all several pages long and broken into numbered stanzas: Pack Rat Sieve; Farolita; Ricochet Off Water; and The Heat Bird. The verso indicates that some of the poems in the book were previously published in Conjunctions, Contact II, Roof, and Telephone.Empathy
Empathy was published by Station Hill Press in 1989, and contains three numbered groups of poems. The verso indicates that some of the poems appeared in Bridge, Calaban, Conjunctions, Parnassus, Temblor, and Tyuonyi. The book is dedicated to Bradford Morrow and Sheffield Van Buren, and contains the following poems:Group 1: The Blue Taj; Tan Tien; Alakanak Break-Up; Texas; Duration of Water; The Star Field; and Chinese Space.
Group 2: Jealousy; Recitative; The Carmelites; The Margin; Naturalism; and Fog.
Group 3: War Insurance; Empathy; The Swan; Forms of Politeness; and Honeymoon.
Sphericity
Sphericity was published by Kelsey Street Press in 1993, and was her second collaboration with Richard Tuttle. The first edition of Sphericity was limited to 2000 copies, with the first 50 signed by Berssenbrugge and Tuttle and hand-colored by Tuttle. The book consists of six long poems, all with several numbered stanzas: Ideal; Size; Combustion; Sphericity; Experience; and Value.Endocrinology
Endocrinology is an artists' book made in collaboration with visual artist Kiki SmithKiki Smith
Kiki Smith is an American artist classified as a feminist artist, a movement with beginnings in the twentieth century...
. Forty copies were produced by Universal Limited Art Editions from a maquette made by Berssenbrugge and Smith. The Kelsey Street Press edition, a facsimile of the original book, was limited to 2,000 copies, with the first 60 signed and numbered. The book contains a single poem: Endocrinology.
Awards
- 1976 National Endowment for the ArtsNational Endowment for the ArtsThe National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
Fellowship. - 1980 American Book AwardAmerican Book AwardThe American Book Award was established in 1978 by the Before Columbus Foundation. It seeks to recognize outstanding literary achievement by contemporary American authors, without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre...
for Random Possession. - 1981 National Endowment for the ArtsNational Endowment for the ArtsThe National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
Fellowship. - 1984 American Book AwardAmerican Book AwardThe American Book Award was established in 1978 by the Before Columbus Foundation. It seeks to recognize outstanding literary achievement by contemporary American authors, without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre...
for The Heat Bird. - 1990 National Endowment for the ArtsNational Endowment for the ArtsThe National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
Award. - 1990 PEN West Award for Empathy.
- 1998 Asian American Literary Award for Endocrinology.
- 1999 Western States Book Award for Four Year Old Girl.
- 2004 Asian American Literary Award for Nest.
Poetry
- Fish Souls. New York: Greenwood Press. 1971 Other ISBN 9780912678153. Other ISBN 9780918408136; Other ISBN: I0930901037; 0930901037; 9780930901035
- Hiddenness. New York : Library Fellows of the Whitney Museum of American Art. 1987 (A collaboration with Richard TuttleRichard TuttleRichard Dean Tuttle is an American postminimalist artist known for his small, subtle, intimate works. His art makes use of scale and line.- Biography :...
) - Empathy. Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press. 1989
- Mizu. Tucson, AZ: Chax Press. 1990 Other ISBNs: 9780932716309; 0932716318; 9780932716316 (A collaboration with Richard TuttleRichard TuttleRichard Dean Tuttle is an American postminimalist artist known for his small, subtle, intimate works. His art makes use of scale and line.- Biography :...
) Other ISBNs: 0932716423 (Limited Edition) (A collaboration with Kiki SmithKiki SmithKiki Smith is an American artist classified as a feminist artist, a movement with beginnings in the twentieth century...
) - Four Year Old Girl. Berkeley, CA: Kelsey Street Press, 1998 (A collaboration with Kiki SmithKiki SmithKiki Smith is an American artist classified as a feminist artist, a movement with beginnings in the twentieth century...
)
Plays
- One, Two Cups, directed by Frank Chin, and published in 1974 in Summits Move With the Tide.
- Kindness (1994), commissioned by the Ford Foundation and staged at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe with the collaboration of Richard Tuttle, Tan Dun, and Chen Shi Zheng.
Broadsides
- The Mouse 5. IE Poetry Broadside Series Two, Clayton Fine Books, 2006. "Issued in an edition of 25 copies of which 20 copies are for sale."
Magazines and Journals
- Berssenbrugge, Mei-mei. The Mouse, Conjunctions, Number 48, Spring 2007.
External links
- The Mei-mei Berssenbrugge page at Poets.org.
- Mei-mei Berssenbrugge's author page at the Electronic Poetry Center
- A review of I Love Artists by Ben LernerBen LernerBenjamin S. Lerner is an American poet, novelist, and critic. He was awarded the Hayden Carruth prize for his cycle of fifty-two sonnets, . In 2004, Library Journal named it one of the year's twelve best books of poetry...
- Mei-mei Berssenbrugge Links at "Intercapillary Space" - links to Berssenbrugge poems, reviews, talks, recordings.
- Berssenbrugge's works at Kelsey Street Press
- "Add-Verse" a poetry-photo-video project Berssenbrugge participated in
- Hinton, Laura. "Three Conversations With Mei-mei Berssenbrugge" Jacket, Issue 27, 2005
Poems and Talks
- From A Context of a Wave, published in Conjunctions 17, Fall 1991.
- Kate's Talk, a talk presented by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge at The Poetry Project, St. Mark's on the Bowery, October, 1987.
- New Form, opening remarks delivered at the "New Forms/New Functions" panel of the Poetry Project's Symposium, Poetry of Everyday Life.
- Safety from How 2, Volume 1, Issue 8, 2002.
- Susie, Kiki, Annie, published in Big Bridge.
- The New Boys, published in the October 2008 issue of The Brooklyn Rail.
Audio
- A recording of a reading and conversation with Charles BernsteinCharles BernsteinCharles Bernstein is an American poet, theorist, editor, and literary scholar. Bernstein holds the Donald T. Regan Chair in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is one of the most prominent members of the Language poets . In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the American...
- A recording of Berssenbrugge reading at the University of CaliforniaUniversity of CaliforniaThe University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...
, Berkeley. - Berssenbrugge reading her poem, Texas.
Video
- A video of Berssenbrugge reading at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1 April 1999
- A video of Berssenbrugge in conversation with Arthur SzeArthur SzeArthur Sze is a second-generation Chinese American poet.-Background:Sze was educated at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of eight books of poetry...
- Lunch Poems: Mei-mei Berssenbrugge