Ted Berrigan
Encyclopedia
Early life
Berrigan was born in ProvidenceProvidence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...
, Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
, on November 15, 1934. After high school, he spent a year at Providence College
Providence College
Providence College is a private, coeducational, Catholic university located about two miles west of downtown Providence, Rhode Island, United States, the state's capital city. With a 2010–2011 enrollment of 3,850 undergraduate students and 735 graduate students, the College specializes in academic...
before joining the U.S. Army in 1954 to serve in the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
. After three years in the Army, he finished his college studies at the University of Tulsa
University of Tulsa
The University of Tulsa is a private university awarding bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA. It is currently ranked 75th among doctoral degree granting universities in the nation by US News and World Report and is listed as one of the "Best 366 Colleges" by...
in Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
, where he received a B.A.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in English
English studies
English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language , English linguistics English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language (including literatures from the U.K., U.S.,...
in 1959 and falling just short of the requirements for a M.A.
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
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
Alice Notley
Alice Notley is an American poet. She was born in Bisbee, Arizona and grew up in Needles, California. She received a B.A. from Barnard College in 1967 and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1969. She married poet Ted Berrigan in 1972, with whom she was active in...
were active in the poetry scene in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
for several years, then moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where he edited various magazines and books.
The New York School
A prominent figure in the second generation of the New York SchoolNew 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...
of Poets, Berrigan was peer to Jim Carroll
Jim Carroll
James Dennis "Jim" Carroll was an author, poet, autobiographer, and punk musician. Carroll was best known for his 1978 autobiographical work The Basketball Diaries, which was made into the 1995 film of the same name, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Carroll.-Biography:Carroll was born to a...
, Anselm Hollo
Anselm Hollo
Anselm Paul Alexis Hollo is a Finnish poet and translator. He has lived in the United States since 1967.-Life and work:...
, Ron Padgett
Ron Padgett
Ron Padgett is an American poet, essayist, fiction writer, translator, and a member of the New York School. Bean Spasms, Padget's first collection of poems, was published in 1967 and written with Ted Berrigan...
, 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 Lewis Warsh. He collaborated with Padgett and Joe Brainard
Joe Brainard
Joe Brainard was an American artist and writer associated with the New York School. His prodigious and innovative body of work included assemblages, collages, drawing, and painting, as well as designs for book and album covers, theatrical sets and costumes...
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.
In 2005, Ted Berrigan's published and unpublished poetry was published together in a single volume edited by the poet Alice Notley
Alice Notley
Alice Notley is an American poet. She was born in Bisbee, Arizona and grew up in Needles, California. She received a B.A. from Barnard College in 1967 and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1969. She married poet Ted Berrigan in 1972, with whom she was active in...
, Berrigan's second wife, and their two sons, Anselm Berrigan
Anselm Berrigan
Anselm Berrigan is a poet and teacher. He grew up in New York City, where he currently resides with his wife, poet Karen Weiser. From 2003 to 2007, he served as artistic director at the St. Mark's Poetry Project...
– a poet – and Edmund Berrigan, a poet and songwriter.
The Sonnets
The poet Frank O'HaraFrank O'Hara
Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara was an American writer, poet and art critic. He was a member of the New York School of poetry.-Life:...
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
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
’s The Waste Land
The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...
and Berrigan’s own literary innovations and personal experiences. The product is a composition, in the words of Berrigan’s editor and second wife Alice Notley, “[that is] musical, sexy, and funny.”
Berrigan was initially drawn to the sonnet form because of its inherent challenge; in his own words, "the form sort of [stultifies] the whole process [of writing]." The procedure that he ultimately concocted to write The Sonnets is the essence of the work’s novelty and ingenuity. After attempting several sonnets, Berrigan decided to go back through what he had written and take out certain lines, one line from each work until he had six lines. He then went through the poems backwards and took one more line from each until he had accumulated six more lines, twelve lines total. Based on this body of the work, Berrigan knew what the final couplet would be; this process became the basis for The Sonnets. Addressing claims that the method is totally mechanical, Berrigan explains that some of the seventy-seven sonnets came to him "whole," not needing to be pieced together. The poet’s preoccupation with style, his concern for form and his own role as the creator as evinced by The Sonnets pose a challenge to traditional ideas about poetry and signify a fresh and innovative artistic approach.
The book recognizes the eternal possibility for invention in a genre seemingly overwhelmed by the success of its traditional forms. By imitating the forms and practices of earlier artists and recreating them to express personal ideas and experiences, Berrigan demonstrates the potential for poetry in his and subsequent generations. As Charles Bernstein succinctly comments, “Part collage, part process writing, part sprung lyric, Ted Berrigan’s The Sonnets remains…one of the freshest and most buoyantly inspired works of contemporary poetry. Reinventing verse for its time, The Sonnets are redolent with possibilities for our own.”
Selected publications
- The Sonnets (1964)
- Living With Chris (1965)
- Some Things (1966)
- Bean Spasms, with Ron PadgettRon PadgettRon Padgett is an American poet, essayist, fiction writer, translator, and a member of the New York School. Bean Spasms, Padget's first collection of poems, was published in 1967 and written with Ted Berrigan...
and Joe BrainardJoe BrainardJoe Brainard was an American artist and writer associated with the New York School. His prodigious and innovative body of work included assemblages, collages, drawing, and painting, as well as designs for book and album covers, theatrical sets and costumes...
(1967) - Many Happy Returns (1967)
- Peace: Broadside (1969)
- Memorial Day, with Anne WaldmanAnne WaldmanAnne 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....
(1971) - Train Ride (1971)
- Back In Boston Again, with Ron PadgettRon PadgettRon Padgett is an American poet, essayist, fiction writer, translator, and a member of the New York School. Bean Spasms, Padget's first collection of poems, was published in 1967 and written with Ted Berrigan...
and Tom ClarkTom ClarkTom Clark is a Canadian television journalist. He has been a substitute anchor for CTV National News, and host of Power Play, a political program on CTV News Channel...
(1972) - The Drunken Boat (1974)
- A Feeling For Leaving (1975)
- Red Wagon (1976)
- Clear The Range (1977)
- Nothing For You (1977)
- Yo-Yo's With Money, with Harris Schiff (1979)
- Carrying a Torch (1980)
- So Going Around Cities: New & Selected Poems 1958-1979 (1980) (ISBN 0-912652-61-6)
- In a Blue River (1981)
- A Certain Slant of Sunlight (1988)
- Selected Poems (1994)
- Great Stories of the Chair (1998)
- The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (University of California Press, 2005) NOH (1969)
Further reading
- Clark, TomTom Clark (poet)Tom Clark is an American poet, editor and biographer. Clark was born on the Near West Side of Chicago and educated at the University of Michigan where he received a Hopwood Award for poetry. On March 22, 1968, he married Angelica Heinegg, at St. Mark’s Church, New York City...
. Late Returns, a Memoir of Ted Berrigan (Tombouctou Books, 1985) ISBN 0-939180-35-9 - Waldman, AnneAnne WaldmanAnne 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....
. Nice To See You: Homage to Ted Berrigan (Coffee House Press, 1991) ISBN 0-918273-11-0 - GAS #3 (Ted Berrigan Issue) Tom Clark [editor] (1991): includes contributions by Charles BukowskiCharles BukowskiHenry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles...
, Alice NotleyAlice NotleyAlice Notley is an American poet. She was born in Bisbee, Arizona and grew up in Needles, California. She received a B.A. from Barnard College in 1967 and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1969. She married poet Ted Berrigan in 1972, with whom she was active in...
, Anne WaldmanAnne WaldmanAnne 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....
, Anselm HolloAnselm HolloAnselm Paul Alexis Hollo is a Finnish poet and translator. He has lived in the United States since 1967.-Life and work:...
, Bill BerksonBill BerksonBill Berkson is an American poet, critic, teacher and sometime curator, who has been active in the art and literary worlds since his early twenties.-Life:Born in New York on August 30, 1939, Bill Berkson grew up on Manhattan’s Upper...
, Annie LaurieAnnie LaurieAnnie Laurie is an old Scottish song based on poem by William Douglas of Dumfries and Galloway. The words were modified and the tune was added by Alicia Scott in 1834/5. The song is also known as Maxwelton Braes.-William Douglas:...
, Jim CarrollJim CarrollJames Dennis "Jim" Carroll was an author, poet, autobiographer, and punk musician. Carroll was best known for his 1978 autobiographical work The Basketball Diaries, which was made into the 1995 film of the same name, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Carroll.-Biography:Carroll was born to a...
, Eileen MylesEileen MylesEileen Myles is an American poet who has also worked in fiction, non-fiction, and theater.She won a 2010 Shelley Memorial Award.-Early life and career:...
, Joe BrainardJoe BrainardJoe Brainard was an American artist and writer associated with the New York School. His prodigious and innovative body of work included assemblages, collages, drawing, and painting, as well as designs for book and album covers, theatrical sets and costumes...
, Owen Hill, Tom VeitchTom VeitchTom Veitch is an American writer, best known for his contributions to the Dark Horse Comics line of Star Wars comic books, primarily Dark Empire and Tales of the Jedi. For DC Comics Veitch wrote Animal Man, along with two Elseworlds series featuring Kamandi and an elder Superman...
, Ron PadgettRon PadgettRon Padgett is an American poet, essayist, fiction writer, translator, and a member of the New York School. Bean Spasms, Padget's first collection of poems, was published in 1967 and written with Ted Berrigan...
, Steve Carey, Clark CoolidgeClark CoolidgeClark Coolidge is an American poet born in Providence, Rhode Island.Often associated with the Language School, his experience as a Jazz drummer and interest in a wide array of subjects--- including caves, geology, bebop, weather, Salvador Dalí, Jack Kerouac, and movies--- often finds...
, et al.)