Customer Reviews

On the Level Everyday: Selected Talks on Poetry and the Art of Living

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This collection of lectures by Ted Berrigan offers a very inclusive introduction to the writing of poetry. Berrigan does not pit abstract writers against their more accesible colleagues by talking solely about craft. In fact, Berrigan's lectures are more about lifestyle and perspective, which I found to be a more helpful approach as a fledgling wordsmith. He implores some tough, hard-earned advice laced with humor, imporing readers to own their own approach instead of following some outside principles of accessiblity, etc. You'll never think of writer's block or experimentation the same again.

David Kirby, in his review of Berrigan's book, says "Berrigan says (referring to an exotic form of execution he mentions in one of his poems): 'The Persians thought it up, or if it wasn't the Persians it was somebody who didn't like the Persians, but it was one or the other,' a sentence an editor would have blue-penciled had these talks been written out as essays."

Well hooty toot toot. Ted would have had a good laugh at that one. As for Mr. Kirby, I fear he's the kind of academic smarty who would 'blue-pencil' Groucho Marx from American culture. But Ted, you see, took everything in -- including the Marx Brothers. There was fearless humor and irony and wide-open perspective in everything he said and did...(unlike the tight-arse weenies with their frowning blue-pencils).