The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (80 page)

Four Gates to the City
This poem is dated “1974” on the manuscript. It contains lines by Tom Clark, Ron Padgett, Martha and the Vandellas, and the French poet Théophile Gautier (1811–1872). Ted and Gordon Brotherston had translated two of Gautier’s poems,
“L’Art”
and
“Préface,”
from
Emaux et camées
(Enamels and Cameos). The reference to Goethe’s “divan at Weimar” is from
“L’Art.”

In Blood
The poem is composed largely of words from my poems, notably a sonnet sequence entitled
Great Interiors, Wines & Spirits of the World
. The closing line, however, is from Frank O’Hara’s poem “Cambridge”; in O’Hara’s poem the line refers to Boris Pasternak.

So Going Around Cities
This, the longest poem of the sequence, signals a return to the United States. It was written in Chicago, circa 1974–1975 and is dedicated, and addressed, to “Doug & Jan Oliver.” Douglas Oliver, the late British poet, was a student at the University of Essex where Ted taught from 1973 to 1974. He is one of the three dedicatees of the book
So Going Around Cities
. The title phrase (of both the poem and the book) is from the poem “Rivers and Mountains” by John Ashbery. The refrain of lines beginning with the words “I traded” owes a debt to the song “City Singer” by musician / songwriter Larry Estridge.

Narragansett Park
From this poem onward all the poems in the sequence were written in New York City at 101 St. Mark’s Place.

A Note from Yang-Kuan
We have made a handful of changes from texts as presented in
So Going Around Cities
, based on Ted’s final manuscript of the sequence. In “A Note from Yang-Kuan,” in the eighth line, a comma has been removed after the word “And.” In the same poem, in the twelfth line, the phrase “The poor” has been amended to “Tho poor.” “Yang-Kuan” is a place-name in a poem by the Chinese poet Wang Wei and also occurs in my poem “After Wang Wei.”

Everybody Seemed So Laid Back in the Park
Constructed from prose sentences by Bernadette Mayer.

A Meeting at the Bridge
We have made punctuation changes from the version in
So Going Around Cities
, consistent with Ted’s final manuscript copy. The changes are too complicated to describe, but they occur in the third stanza and last couplet.

“I Remember”
A sonnet composed of lines from Joe Brainard’s opus
I Remember
.

To Himself
After Giacomo Leopardi’s
“A se stesso,”
“To Himself” is the result of a lengthy process of translation involving several people. In the
Easter Monday
folder Ted has appended the following notes to the poem: “trans by Ted Berrigan from prose version by George Schneeman & poem version worked at by Berrigan & Engl. trans, poet, & Latin American specialist Gordon Brotherston.”

Whitman in Black
One of Ted’s most widely anthologized poems, this sonnet, inspired by the crime novelist Ross MacDonald, turns the, or a, poet into both a criminal and a detective, invoking Whitman for corroboration. The MacDonald source is
On Crime Writing
(Santa Barbara, Calif.: Capra Press, 1973).

Heloise
Dated “27 Aug 77” in the final manuscript. Ted wrote “Heloise” after reading Helen Waddell’s novel
Abelard
.

From the House Journal
Dated “30 Aug 77” in the final manuscript, this poem is composed of lines beginning with the pronoun “I,” taken from the index of first lines and titles in
The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara
.

Visits from a Small Enigma
Written using Jim Brodey’s words, this poem is dated “31 Aug 77” in the final manuscript.

Revery
Reverdy. That is, this poem uses language translated from the poetry of Pierre Reverdy.

My Tibetan Rose
This final poem in the sequence is dated “1 Sept. 77.” It was written after Ted read Lionel Davidson’s thriller
The Rose of Tibet
.

Published by United Artists (Lewis Warsh and Bernadette Mayer, editors) in 1977. The original front and back cover art for
Nothing for You
was by George Schneeman.

Several poems that originally appeared in the book
Nothing for You
have been omitted from this section and appear elsewhere in this volume. “Poem” (“of morning, Iowa City, blue . . .”), which originally appeared after “Monolith,” has been
omitted by the editors, since it appears previously in the section
In the Early Morning Rain
. “Method Action,” which originally appeared after
“Mi Casa, Su Casa,”
“A Little American Feedback,” which originally appeared after “New Personal Poem,” and “A Note from Yang Kuan,” which originally appeared after “Blue Targets,” have been omitted since they were finally included in
Easter Monday
.

A number of the poems in
Nothing for You
were later reprinted in
So Going Around Cities
, with small changes. We have invariably honored the later changes.

Valentine
The opening sixteen pages of
Nothing for You
consist of poems written in the early 60s. Ted had continued to tinker with them over the years and was particularly obsessed with “Valentine,” “Hearts,” and “String of Pearls.” “Valentine,” as presented here, seems finally perfect, the result of almost twenty years of consideration of twelve lines. In “Valentine” an ellipsis that appeared in the last line in the United Artists publication of
Nothing for You
was removed for publication in
So Going Around Cities
(and here).

Doubts
In “Doubts” and in “He,” “For Annie Rooney,” “Saturday Afternoons on the Piazza,” “Prayer,” “Night Letter,” “Some Do Not,” “Autumn’s Day,” “Truth as History,” “Francis à Bientôt,” and “New Junket” may be found material that was used in
The Sonnets
. These poems, along with those in
Early Poems
, are source works for that sequence.

Prayer, Night Letter,
and
The TV Story
These three early poems printed in
So Going Around Cities
have been added to this “early poems” part of
Nothing for You
. To accommodate these additions more gracefully we have moved the poem “Saturday Afternoons on the Piazza,” originally appearing after “Francis à Bientôt,” to a position immediately after “For Annie Rooney.”

Some Do Not
Some Do Not
is the title of the first volume of Ford Madox Ford’s tetrology,
Parade’s End
. (“Ford Madox Ford is not a dream” is a recurring line in
The Sonnets
.)

On the Level Everyday
This poem originally appeared, in a different version, in
Bean Spasms
, under the title “The Level of Everyday.” The second version,
rewritten for
Nothing for You
, seems superior to the first. It should be noted that Ted could not help playing with his poems, especially older, less famous ones whose identities were not yet frozen for his audience.

Autumn’s Day
Rather than being designated
“after Rilke,”
this translation/adaptation was originally attributed to “Rilke (trans. Ted Berrigan),” at the bottom of the poem, in
Nothing for You
.

String of Pearls
For its presentation in
So Going Around Cities
Ted removed some in-line spaces from the version originally appearing in
Nothing for You
.

Francis à Bientôt
See the note for “Telegram” in
In the Early Morning Rain
.

Cento: A Note on Philosophy
This poem did not include the dedication “for Pat Mitchell” in
Nothing for You
but did in
So Going Around Cities
. We have thus kept the dedication.

New Junket
“for Harry Fainlight
”: In a moving obituary for Fainlight written for the Poetry Project
Newsletter
in 1982, Ted states, in regard to meeting Fainlight in 1963: “Harry & I met like two boys in a John Buchan novel; a Yank, with no connotations other than friend on that word, and a Brit, one who as it turned out had American citizenship by birth, but had grown up entirely in England and was Oxford London to the core. . . . We liked one another from the first, like they say, and spent long hours and nights in Ratner’s, comparing maps of the worlds of poetry.”

From
The Art of the Sonnet
The Art of the Sonnet
is a six-part collaborative work written with Tom Clark in New York in 1967. This version consists of numbers 1, 3, and 6; Ted has made changes in parts 3 and 6 in the manuscript copy we retain.

Air Conditioning
and
Monolith
These poems were both written in Iowa City circa 1968–1969. They are about Ted’s being in his office at the Writers’ Workshop, University of Iowa.

London
and
London Air
These poems were both written during Ted’s first trip to England in the summer of 1969. “London Air” is dedicated to Robert Creeley, who was also in London at the time. This poem, and Creeley’s “In London,” mark the beginning of their friendship and cross-influence. In “London Air,” “My heart Your heart” is a quotation from Frank O’Hara’s “Poem” (to Donald M. Allen), transformed in the addition of the capital M and the capital Y. From the beginning of this poem Ted is playing with punctuation, emphasis, pronouns, and linguistic exactitude, in a manner reminiscent of Creeley’s but also of poems of his own like “Tambourine Life.”

In Bed with Joan & Alex
This was, like “London Air,” an important poem for Ted at the time of its writing, in this case the fall of 1969 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. As in many of the poems of this period, Ted is alone in his room, and the subject is solitude and what’s “around.” Though this poem is built on sexual innuendo, it is founded on a room washed with light and color, containing two objects which remind the poet of two people who aren’t there. The first object is a shirt, resting on a chair, sewn for Ted by Joan Fagin, a designer and seamstress, at the time married to Larry Fagin; Joan and Larry Fagin had recently visited Ted in Ann Arbor (see “Ann Arbor Song,”
In the Early Morning Rain
). The second object is a painting of a Maine cottage by Alex Katz, a small study for a larger work. Ted’s poem takes the two objects/presences and sets them into motion in a sort of waltz: “Round & round & round we go,” in the words of a Neil Young song that was popular then.

Sweet Vocations
In the last line, “its” (in the version in
Nothing for You
) has been changed to “it’s” (as in the version in
So Going Around Cities
).

Going to Chicago
Like “Black & White Magic,” “Going to Chicago” was written on an airplane. When Ted salutes the poet John Sinclair, Sinclair is presumably below in Detroit as the plane passes overhead. Ted had read with Sinclair at the Berkeley Poetry Conference of 1965. At the time of “Going to Chicago” (1969) Sinclair, a political activist, had just been sentenced to ten years in prison for possession of a joint of marijuana. The dedication to “Going to Chicago” originally read “for Donald Hall” in
Nothing for You
and was changed to “for Don Hall” in
So Going Around Cities
. Also the titles in part 2 were not italicized in
Nothing for You
.

How We Live in the Jungle
Stanza breaks which originally appeared in
Nothing for You
, after the line ending with “furniture” and the line ending with “a buzz on,” were removed for
So Going Around Cities
.

Black & White Magic
“
Secret Clouds
/ I can’t get into you”: in these and the following lines Ted is embedding book titles into syntax, creating a new kind of metaphor. “Secret Clouds” is a story/poem by Harris Schiff, and
Leaving Cheyenne
is a novel by Larry McMurtry. The poem ends with an excerpt from Ted’s back cover copy for Anselm Hollo’s book
Maya
, published by Golliard/Grossman in 1970. Ted’s comment contains the following sentences: “By ‘civilized’ I mean genuinely civilized, that is, with no proportionate loss of spleen. The hits in the poems take place in your head when you read them, but the poems are not a head trip. The head speaks out of the heart to the head connected to the heart.”

Three Poems: Going to Canada
Originally, in
Nothing for You
, “Three Poems: Going to Canada” was called “Three Poems,” with the poems laid out on separate pages. In the first of those poems, “Itinerary,” a stanza break before the line “Go to Canada” was eliminated for
So Going Around Cities
.

Galaxies
The poem “Galaxies” was originally part of the disbanded
Southampton Winter
sequence.

Postmarked Grand Rapids
The word
pauses
was not italicized in
Nothing for You
but was italicized in
So Going Around Cities
.

Further Definitions (Waft)
Ted is in dialogue with Michael Brownstein’s poem “Definitions,” which, laid out similarly to this one, defined certain words. Ted has taken Brownstein’s definitions of those words and defined
them
. Thus Brownstein’s definitions are on the left, and Ted’s definitions of the definitions are on the right.

Kirsten
Kirsten is Kirsten Creeley. “How you talk” was originally, in
Nothing for You
, “How she talks,” and “You are” was originally “She is.” These particularly crucial changes, again, were made for
So Going Around Cities
.

He
“He” contains material that was incorporated into “Chicago English Afternoon” in
Easter Monday
.