New Personal Poem

By Ted Berrigan 1934–1983 Ted Berrigan

to Michael Lally

You had your own reasons for getting

In your own way. You didn’t want to be

Clear to yourself. You knew a hell

Of a lot more than you were willing

to let yourself know. I felt

Natural love for you on the spot. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Right.

Beautiful. I don’t use the word lightly. I

Protested with whatever love (honesty) (& frontal nudity)

A yes basically reserved Irish Catholic American Providence Rhode

Island New Englander is able to manage. You

Are sophisticated, not uncomplicated, not

Naïve, and Not simple. An Entertainer, & I am, too.

Frank O’Hara respected love, so do you, & so do we.

He was himself & I was me. And when we came together

Each ourselves in Iowa, all the way

That was love, & it still is, love, today. Can you see me

In what I say? Because as well I see you know

In what you have to say, I did love Frank, as I do

You, “in the right way”.

That’s just talk, not Logos,

a getting down to cases:

I take it as simple particulars that

we wear our feelings on our faces.

Source: Selected Poems (Penguin Books, 1994)

Biography

Ted Berrigan—Edmund Joseph Michael Berrigan Jr.—was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the oldest of three children of Margaret Dugan and Edmund Berrigan, the chief engineer at Ward's Baking Company. On both sides the family was Irish Catholic. Berrigan attended local schools and entered Providence College, a local Catholic school, but left after a year and enlisted in the army.

Berrigan was sent to Korea in 1954 but never saw . . .

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