The Sonnets

by Berrigan, Ted (Author); Notley, Alice (Editor)

• ISBN13: 9780140589276
• ISBN10: 0140589279
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-10-01
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)

Summary

Originally published in 1964, The Sonnets by Ted Berrigan is considered by many to be his most important and influential book. This new annotated edition, with an introduction by Alice Notley, includes seven previously uncollected works. Like Shakespeare's sonnets, Berrigan's poems involve friendship and love triangles, but while the former happen chronologically, Berrigan's happen in the moment, with the story buried beneath a surface of names, repetitions, and fragmented experience. Reflecting the new American sensibilities of the 1960's as well as timeless poetic themes, The Sonnets is both eclectic and classical -- the poems are monumental riddles worth contemplating.

Excerpts

Chapter One

    I

His piercing pince-nez. Some dim frieze

Hands point to a dim frieze, in the dark night.

In the book of his music the corners have straightened:

Which owe their presence to our sleeping hands.

The ox-blood from the hands which play

For fire for warmth for hands for growth

Is there room in the room that you room in?

Upon his structured tomb:

Still they mean something. For the dance

And the architecture.

Weave among incidents

May be portentous to him

We are the sleeping fragments of his sky,

Wind giving presence to fragments.

    II

Dear Margie, hello. It is 5:15 a.m.

dear Berrigan. He died

Back to books. I read

It's 8:30 p.m. in New York and I've been running around all day

old come-all-ye's streel into the streets. Yes, it is now,

How Much Longer Shall I Be Able To Inhabit The Divine

and the day is bright gray turning green

feminine marvelous and tough

watching the sun come up over the Navy Yard

to write scotch-tape body in a notebook

had 17 and 1/2 milligrams

Dear Margie, hello. It is 5:15 a.m.

fucked til 7 now she's late to work and I'm

18 so why are my hands shaking I should know better

    III

Stronger than alcohol, more great than song,

deep in whose reeds great elephants decay;

I, an island, sail, and my shores toss

on a fragrant evening, fraught with sadness

bristling hate.

It's true, I weep too much. Dawns break

slow kisses on the eyelids of the sea,

what other men sometimes have thought they've seen.

And since then I've been bathing in the poem

lifting her shadowy flowers up for me,

and hurled by hurricanes to a birdless place

the waving flags, nor pass by prison ships

O let me burst, and I be lost at sea!

and fall on my knees then, womanly.

    IV

Lord, it is time. Summer was very great.

All sweetly spoke to her of me

about your feet, so delicate, and yet double E!!

And high upon the Brooklyn Bridge alone,

to breathe an old woman slop oatmeal,

loveliness that longs for butterfly! There is no pad

as you lope across the trails and bosky dells

I often think sweet and sour pork"

shoe repair, and scary. In cities,

I strain to gather my absurdities

He buckled on his gun, the one

Poised like Nijinsky

at every hand, my critic

and when I stand and clank it gives me shoes

    V

Squawking a gala occasion, forgetting, and

"Hawkaaaaaaaaaat" Once I went scouting

As stars are, like nightmares, a crucifix.

Why can't I read French? I don't know why can't you?

Rather the matter of growth

My babies parade waving their innocent flags

Huddled on the structured steps

Flinging currents into pouring streams

The "jeunes filles" so rare.

He wanted to know the names

He liked boys, never had a mother

Meanwhile, terrific misnomers went concocted, ayearning,

   ayearning

The Pure No Nonsense

And all day: Perceval! Perceval!

    VI

The bulbs burn phosphorescent, white

Your hair moves slightly,

Tenseness, but strength, outward

And the green rug nestled against the furnace

Dust had covered all the tacks, the hammer

... optimism for the jump ...

The taste of such delicate thoughts

Never bring the dawn.

The bulbs burn, phosphorescent, white,

Melting the billowing snow with wine:

Could the mind turn jade? everything

Turning in this light, to stones,

Ash, bark like cork, a fading dust,

To cover the tracks of "The Hammer."

POEM IN THE TRADITIONAL MANNER

Whenever Richard Gallup is dissevered,

Fathers and teachers, and daemons down under the sea,

Audenesque Epithalamiums! She

Sends her driver home and she stays with me.

Match-Game etcetera! Bootleggers

Barrel-assing chevrolets grow bold. I summon

To myself sad silent thoughts,

Opulent, sinister, and cold.

Shall it be male or female in the tub?

And grawk go under, and grackle disappear,

And high upon the Brooklyn Bridge alone,

An ugly ogre masturbates by ear:

Of my darling, my darling, my pipe and my slippers,

Something there is is benzedrine in bed:

And so, so Asiatic, Richard Gallup

Goes home, and gets his gat, and plugs his dad.

POEM IN THE MODERN MANNER

She comes as in a dream with west wind eggs,

bringing Huitzilopochtli hot possets:

Snakeskins! But I am young, just old enough

to breathe, an old woman, slop oatmeal,

lemongrass, dewlarks, full draught of, fall thud.

Lady of the May, thou art fair,

Lady, thou art truly fair! Children,

When they see your face,

Sing in idiom of disgrace.

Pale like an ancient scarf, she is unadorned,

bouncing a red rubber ball in the veins.

The singer sleeps in Cos. Strange juxtaposed

the phantom sings: Bring me red demented rooms,

warm and delicate words! Swollen as if new-out-of-bed

Huitzilopochtli goes his dithyrambic way,

quick-shot, resuscitate, all roar!

FROM A SECRET JOURNAL

My babies parade waving their innocent flags

an unpublished philosopher, a man who must

column after column down colonnade of rust

in my paintings, for they are present

I am wary of the mulctings of the pink promenade,

went in the other direction to Tulsa,

glistering, bristling, cozening whatever disguises

S of Christmas John Wayne will clown with

Dreams, aspirations of presence! Innocence gleaned,

annealed! The world in its mysteries are explained,

and the struggles of babies congeal. A hard core is formed.

"I wanted to be a cowboy." Doughboy will do.

Romance of it all was overwhelming

daylight of itself dissolving and of course it rained.

REAL LIFE

1. THE FOOL

He eats of the fruits of the great Speckle

Bird, pissing in the grass! Is it possible

He is incomplete, bringing you Ginger Ale

Of the interminably frolicsome gushing summer showers?

You were a Campfire Girl,

Only a part-time mother and father; I

Was large, stern, acrid, and undissuadable!

Ah, Bernie, we wear complete

The indexed Webster Unabridged Dictionary.

And lunch is not lacking, ants and clover

On the grass. To think of you alone

Suffering the poem of these states!

Oh Lord, it is bosky, giggling happy here,

And you, and me, the juice, at last extinct!

2. THE FIEND

Red-faced and romping in the wind

I too am reading the technical journals, but

Keeping Christmas-safe each city block

With tail-pin. My angels are losing patience,

Never win. Except at night. Then

I would like a silken thread

Tied round the solid blooming winter.

Trees stand stark-naked guarding bridal paths;

The cooling wind keeps blowing, and

There is a faint chance in geometric boxes!

It doesn't matter, though, to show he is

Your champion. Days are nursed on science fiction

And you tremble at the books upon the earth

As my strength and I walk out and look for you.

PENN STATION

On the green a white boy goes

And he walks. Three ciphers and a faint fakir

No One Two Three Four Today

I thought about all those radio waves

Winds flip down the dark path of breath

Passage the treasure Gomangani I

Forget bring the green boy white ways

And the wind goes there

Keats was a baiter of bears

Who died of lust (You lie! You lie!)

As so we all must in the green jungle

Under a sky of burnt umber we bumble to

The mien florist's to buy green nosegays

For the fey Saint's parade Today

We may read about all those radio waves

(Continues...)