The Sonnets (Poets, Penguin) [Paperback]

Ted Berrigan (Author), Alice Notley (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Poets, Penguin | Publication Date: October 3, 2000

After many years out of print, Ted Berrigan's highly regarded sonnets are now available in a new edition that includes seven previously unpublished works. Reflecting the new American sensibilities of the 1960s as well as timeless poetic themes, The Sonnets are both eclectic and classical -- they are verbal riddles worth contemplating.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The sonnet, in Berrigan's hands (and scissors), was as much an arbitrary frame for experience as a traditional form. In her introduction and notes to this fifth and definitive printing of her late first husband's 1963 collage masterpiece, poet Alice Notley makes a persuasive case for the philosophical and art-historical grounding of these poems. On now greatly facilitated rereading, however, they remain first and foremost wonderful poetry. Berrigan's "sonnets" (conventional almost exclusively in their line count) were put together using a plethora of now-famous techniques: frame-breaking jump cuts, lines and phrases transposed from poem to poem and line to line, sound-based translations from French (and English), and simply beautiful writing. These methods, some lifted from John Ashbery's The Tennis Court Oath, are put in the service of plotlines both poignant and surly, and details hilarious and sensuous: "I think I was thinking when I was/ ahead I'd be somewhere like Perry street erudite/ dazzling slim and badly loved/ contemplating my new book of poems/ to be printed in simple type on old brown paper/ feminine marvelous and tough." The sonnet's customary pithy closing couplet is here converted into the detached, calm endings of modern poems and short stories. And the volta, or the rhetorical turn that characterizes Shakespeare's sonnets, isn't fixed at the beginning of the ninth line, as befits a poetry influenced (as Notley notes) by Whitehead's theory of time. This edition includes seven previously uncollected sonnets; these, with Notley's commentary, make this an indispensable addition to any poetry library. One hopes it will alert publishers to the need for a Collected Berrigan, and introduce new readers to a midcentury classic.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

From A Secret Journal
Mess Occupations
Penn Station
Poem In The Modern Manner
Poem In The Traditional Manner
Real Life: 1. The Fool
Real Life: 2. The Fiend
A Sonnet For Dick Gallup
Sonnet: 1
Sonnet: 13
Sonnet: 14
Sonnet: 15
Sonnet: 16
Sonnet: 17
Sonnet: 18
Sonnet: 19
Sonnet: 2
Sonnet: 21
Sonnet: 22
Sonnet: 23
Sonnet: 25
Sonnet: 26
Sonnet: 27
Sonnet: 28
Sonnet: 29
Sonnet: 3
Sonnet: 30
Sonnet: 31
Sonnet: 32
Sonnet: 33
Sonnet: 34
Sonnet: 35
Sonnet: 36
Sonnet: 37
Sonnet: 38
Sonnet: 4
Sonnet: 40
Sonnet: 41
Sonnet: 42
Sonnet: 43
Sonnet: 44
Sonnet: 45
Sonnet: 46. Lines For Lauren Owen
Sonnet: 47
Sonnet: 48
Sonnet: 49
Sonnet: 5
Sonnet: 50
Sonnet: 51
Sonnet: 52
Sonnet: 53
Sonnet: 55
Sonnet: 56
Sonnet: 57
Sonnet: 59
Sonnet: 6
Sonnet: 60
Sonnet: 61
Sonnet: 64
Sonnet: 65
Sonnet: 66
Sonnet: 67
Sonnet: 68
Sonnet: 70
Sonnet: 71
Sonnet: 73
Sonnet: 74
Sonnet: 75
Sonnet: 76
Sonnet: 77
Sonnet: 78
Sonnet: 80
Sonnet: 81
Sonnet: 82
Sonnet: 83
Sonnet: 84
Sonnet: 85
Sonnet: 87
Sonnet: 88. A Final Sonnet
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (October 3, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140589279
• ISBN-13: 978-0140589276
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #85,951 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Poetry Requires Misunderstanding"-Berrigan, November 14, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Sonnets (Poets, Penguin) (Paperback)

Although many critics and readers have crowned contemporaries John Ashbery or Frank O'Hara the champions of abstract expressionism in poetry, Berrigan's work is often dismissed because on the surface it is overtly stylistic. And while Ashbery speaks in riddles, Berrigan seems to know the worlds that surrounds each phrase and it's arrangement, (or lack thereof). his sonnets are an essential read for anyone interested in the richness, abandonment, and just plain wackiness that can be brought to life through language or even sounds.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally the complete Sonnets, November 21, 2002

By 

Jonathan Mayhew (Lawrence, KS USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Sonnets (Poets, Penguin) (Paperback)

This legendary book of New York school poetry finally appears complete. In previous editions there were mysteriously missing poems. Alice Notley, who was married to Berrigan, provides an illuminating introduction.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Poetry Requires Misunderstanding"-Berrigan, November 15, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Sonnets (Poets, Penguin) (Paperback)

Although many critics and readers have crowned contemporaries John Ashbery or Frank O'Hara the champions of abstract expressionism in poetry, Berrigan's work is often dismissed because on the surface it is overtly stylistic. And while Ashbery speaks in riddles, Berrigan seems to know the worlds that surrounds each phrase and it's arrangement, (or lack thereof). his sonnets are an essential read for anyone interested in the richness, abandonment, and just plain wackiness that can be brought to life through language or even sounds.