Poetry. In his first book-length volume of poetry, Anselm Berrigan asks Why wouldn't I mind/Brushing off another engagement/To go wander around/The shallows of downtown (from Ghost town). Though he may characterize these wide-wandering poems as flitting in the shallows, it is the accumulation of these shallows, of various downtowns and what is thought and seen in them, that makes a depth of INTEGRITY & DRAMATIC LIFE. I don't know what I say/& this has been pointed out to me (from Not all there) but in the process of reporting what many others say, and what he himself might say, provisionally, understatedly, dramatically, with integrity and irony and feeling and cities, friends, employers, nuclear war, drinks, chocloate donuts in vellum-all the detritus and necessity of an astute, young, urban, urbane, poetically driven life-Berrigan gives us a consummately delightful invitation. Someone is at the door. Shall I ask them in? (from A short history of autumn). We are someone. We have been asked
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
A brooding intellect injected into the effusive lyricism of the New York School makes Berrigan's famous parentage--he is the son of poets Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley--an inheritance he self-awarely transforms. Berrigan is not so much undoing intellectualism as trying to wear it lightly, and lyricize it in ways that may at first resemble the work of Ron Padgett, but comes closer to the more sublimated pleasures of John Ashbery: "Do I have to slip into a box/ To prove my disinterest in watching my step?" Berrigan posits a kind of detachment that can co-exist with a heavily marked social calendar ("the phone never rings I never get it when it does"), yet is wryly aware that as a poet "you can get a medal for running in circles, that's integrity for you," and thus balances the sometime solemnity of art with a "dramatic life" that can "instantly trivialize anything." At the tender age of 26, Berrigan is a master of the exuberant, and reading the book straight through can somewhat diminish the quirky insights and intense subjectivity of the individual poems. Yet the pathos of "8/1/97"; the slower, intimate, tenderness of "To what end is what we got..."; and the formal quatrains that appear at the end of the sprawling poem "Ghost Town"--"To be as strange as what/ The heart contains as method/ Of departure it makes sense/ To shake when approaching"--evidence an impressive tonal range. An exciting debut that taunts its own allure--"Catullus didn't/ Have to go down on the mic"--Berrigan's book is a rare, beautiful keeper. (Apr.) FYI: Poet Rod Smith, the buyer/manager of Bridge Street Books in Washington, D.C., has published Edge Books since 1989.
Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Anselm Berrigan (born 1972 in Chicago, Illinois) 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. He is the brother of poet and musician Edmund Berrigan, half-brother of Kate Berrigan and scientist David Berrigan, son of poets Alice Notley and the late Ted Berrigan, and stepson of the late English poet and prose writer Douglas Oliver. He has also lived in Buffalo, NY at the "Ranch" and was known lovingly as "Anton" in San Francisco, CA. He is a co-chair of the writing program at the Bard College summer MFA program and a professor at Wesleyan University. He has also taught writing at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Pratt Institute, and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Berrigan rallies what remains,
By A Customer
This review is from: Integrity & Dramatic Life (Paperback)
As a volume that attempts to play out its political arguments by aesthetic means, Integrity & Dramatic Life is remarkably successful. One leaves the book feeling that the world can, for good or for ill, be thrown into a stark and moving relief by poetry so exhaustive in the demands it places on both the speaker and the world in which he lives. This is not to say that the experience of reading this book is tiring; to the contrary, I found myself energized by the quickness, confidence, and intensity of this work. In this, the collection successfully avoids a despairing solipsism, leaving one with the feeling that it is still possible for poetry, through an exhaustive personal engagement with a deeply unjust world, to rally what remains.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
anselm is powerful,
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This review is from: Integrity & Dramatic Life (Paperback)
Anselm Berrigan is one of the most intelligent poets I know. Integrity and Dramatic Life is not only quintessential reading for any writer,It is one of my favorite books. Visit www.narrowhouserecordings.com to hear audio tracks from this amazing volume of work
4 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
poetry royalty,
By A Customer
This review is from: Integrity & Dramatic Life (Paperback)
What a soulful book--can't wait for the movie
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