a question on hearing November 4, 2009: I’ll be heading to Tulsa, Oklahoma tomorrow to take part in The Tulsa School Conference & Literary Festival that Grant Jenkins has organized through The University of Tulsa. Never been there, but my father, Ted Berrigan, was stationed in Tulsa after the Korean War and wound up enrolling in TU via the G.I. Bill. There he met Ron Padgett, Dick [...] by Anselm Berrigan

Poetry and Narrative in Performance, part II October 31, 2009: (note: this is part II of a 1996 letter from the late Doug Oliver on his book Poetry and Narrative in Performance) So we can say: “The ‘neutral’ or ‘unmarked’ tune is that which the words would assume for an average voice in a given dialect when no special emphasis is given to the line, providing there were absolute agreement between [...] by Anselm Berrigan

Poetry and Narrative in Performance, part I October 30, 2009: I remembered recently the existence of a letter my stepfather, the British poet and novelist Douglas Oliver, wrote me thirteen years ago to explain, on my request, the series of experiments he conducted in his study of prosody and voicing, Poetry and Narrative in Performance. The book was published in 1989, and I think the recordings that he [...] by Anselm Berrigan

Steel Nests, pt. II October 26, 2009: Some further thoughts coming out of Alison Collins’ series of nests: The show began with one hundred nests, but I think there were closer to eighty by the time the show closed. Collins was, as I understand it, giving them away here or there, perhaps selling a few. There were neither prices nor even a catalog of any kind at the [...] by Anselm Berrigan

steel nests on their own terms, part I October 22, 2009: This past Sunday, a very wet, windy and gray version of a day, I paid a visit to a small, piano-shaped storefront at 266 W. 37th street to see an installation consisting of one hundred steel nests of varying sizes made by the sculptor Alison Collins. These nests, ranging in size from a few inches to several feet around and made by Collins in [...] by Anselm Berrigan

The Currency of Fashions October 15, 2009: My favorite font is Goudy Old Style. My favorite whiskey is Jameson’s, on the rocks, though I’m off the sauce. My favorite facial expression on others is the slightly astonished smirk. My favorite memory is my father saying “gimme five” upon discovering I’d saved $1.35 by asking for money to buy candy a few times and just pocketing the [...] by Anselm Berrigan

More Internal Data October 11, 2009: Barbara’s comment-response to Terreson’s question as to her own ideas and way about poetry – that her choices of subject in her blog posts are reflective of her overall interests and commitments to and within writing, if I’m hearing her right – has me recalling my first foray into reading John Ashbery’s art writings collected in [...] by Anselm Berrigan

Internal Data October 8, 2009: Several days ago my 22-month old daughter, who has taken to occasionally placing tiny imaginary animals in one’s hand by holding her thumb and index finger a quarter inch apart and identifying the animal being handed over (bunny, zebra, kitty), strolled up to me, held her fingers just apart in my palm, and said “daddy”. The feeling of deep [...] by Anselm Berrigan

Howdy October 3, 2009: Thank you for letting me come over. Having just arrived I’m already baffled but that’s as good a place to begin as any since I’m typically only able to write once I’ve cleared my head of anything resembling thought (or so I tell myself between the cracks). On the other hand this predilection can make writing prose a bit of a tricky [...] by Anselm Berrigan