Zero Star Hotel [Paperback]

Anselm Berrigan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2002

Poetry. The son of Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley, Anselm Berrigan has been surrounded by poetry and poetics his entire life, a fact that was much noted after the publication of his first book, INTEGRITY & DRAMATIC LIFE (also available from SPD). But ZERO STAR HOTEL, while it will impress most of those early readers, may also suprise them. Taking family relationships, including the death of his step-father Douglas Oliver, as his subject matter, Berrigan's new work evinces a startling range and depth: acute anger, confusion, frustration, and stark awareness of the complexity of his poetic inheiritance. While these poems manage to practice the surreal playfulness Berrigan mastered at an early age, the context is darker, the clever phrases ever more ominous. "some say oblivion/ it is where you lose/ the stains on your ivory/ semi-see through/ untucked dress shirt/ but the stains/ they reappear/ on the other side/ and you will pay/ to have them removed" (from "Zero Star Hotel") Kevin Killian

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"We stayed in the worst/ hotel in Paris together/ at one of the worst times/ in my life, that has to be/ true love." The son of the late Ted Berrigan (whose The Sonnets was recently republished) and of Alice Notley (Disobience etc.), Berrigan is also the brother of poet Edmund Berrigan (Disarming Matter), and the stepson of the British poet Douglas Oliver, the author of Penniless Politics, who died in 2000 after a battle with cancer. The long title poem is an elegy for Oliver, and it looms over this mordantly funny, loving second collection that finds, in deathbed helplessness, socio-political jibes and emotional disenfranchisement that honor Oliver's commitment to social justice, and to life. Coming in six small, rapid-fire stanzas per oversized page, arrayed two by three like playing cards, the poem links the poet's grief, trauma and statelessness, and comes up with an odd, grimly affecting empathy: "Glad I didn't have brain/ Surgery, or all my/ Relatives slaughtered/ By a guy trained in/ France to be a lefty/ Intellect while I/ Escaped to drive/ A western taxi/ Glad I left Buffalo/ And San Francisco...." The book's other two other sections collect shorter, open field lyrics from the last few years, aiming deadpan one-liners and moment-to-moment observations at an ambient set of (often named) addressees; it's a coterie aesthetic that knowingly refracts the second generation New York School of Berrigan-Padgett-Hollo, etc. through a personal mise-en-abyme, resulting in "A language poet trapped/ In a confessional poet's body" (the poem ends "I never felt so much alike"). Yet with this beautifully designed oversize book, Berrigan has fully moved into his own territory: "I denied myself the use of color/ I don't think you can call that being fascinated."
Copyright 2002 Reed 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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 101 pages
• Publisher: Edge Books (January 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1890311111
• ISBN-13: 978-1890311117
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.8 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,609,029 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)