The New York School Diaspora (Part Fifty-One): Anselm Berrigan [by Angela Ball]


What the Streets Look Like

Mom: the sweet rotted

summer stench still

taps the nasal cavity

inside breezes several

times per block. I have

a greater empathy for

pigeons after two months

at work in the unnatural

country, & find it

instinctively nerve-

wracking to remove my

wallet from its pocket

here in town despite

the general lack of threat.

The streets look grey

nonplussed, post-

pubescent relative to

ancient times but

nonetheless grid-wizened

in the face of an ever-

changing lineup of

banks, bars, and specialty

shops with their weak

signs and distant tones

(lighting). Second Ave

is giving up, slowly

its cheap depth store-

front by storefront.

One feels less than

nostalgic for the like-

lihood of being mugged

but likelihood itself

feels less than evident

unless one is being

unstable and unspoken

coming to dreaming

while pushing a stroller

over the variously cracked

slabs of concrete each

block yet greets the

wheels with. The right

part of the y heading

west on tenth between

2nd and 3rd is still

tree-lined and aristocratic

as feint, though its

sidewalk looks like

late Auden’s smoked

cheeks. I loathe it,

amiably, when Sylvie

is asleep.

                -Anselm Berrigan

Anselm Berrigan is the author of several books of poetry, including Pregrets (Black Square Editions, 2021), Something for Everybody (Wave Books, 2018), Come in Alone (Wave Books, 2016), Notes from Irrelevance (Wave Books, 2011), Free Cell (City Lights Books, 2009), and Integrity and Dramatic Life (Edge, 1999). With Alice Notley and his brother Edmund Berrigan, he coedited The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (University of California, 2005) and the Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan (University of California, 2011).

Image1

The New York School Diaspora (Part Fifty-One): Anselm Berrigan

Anselm Berrigan’s “What the Streets Look Like”—perhaps a letter to “Mom,” also a poet—employs a somatic/psychological Rimbaud-like intoxication—the speaker, immersed in the city, entrains us. A special feature is New York City’s “summer stench,” inseparable from the perception of it, as it “taps the nasal cavity / inside breezes.” Like most raptures “coming to dreaming,” this one is both personal and impersonal (“one feels less than / nostalgic”), both full-throated and guarded. The poet’s time “working in the unnatural country” has not only affected his “empathy for pigeons” but renders it “instinctively nerve-wracking” to take out his wallet “here in town despite / the general lack of threat.” The poem’s compact lineation and hard enjambment make the city’s press more than palpable, audible. We receive a vivid précis of the neighborhood’s commercial background and prospects, its tired variety show:

     The streets look grey

     nonplussed, post-

     pubescent relative to

     ancient times but

     nonetheless grid-wizened

     in the face of an ever-

     changing lineup of

     banks, bars, and specialty

     shops with their weak

     signs and distant tones

     (lighting).

The oddly-wonderful “grid-wizened” captures so much of the American city street, its “line-up” of putative entertainment also suggestive of crime’s usual suspects.

Two-thirds of the way through our walk, we discover that the poet pushes a stroller. This poem, part of a genre Ron Padgett usefully terms “The Walk,” is—because it happens in a city—also a flaneur poem. Who has heard of a flaneur with a baby? A lobster on a string, maybe, but not progeny. And why not? In its twisty, inward/outward progress, this walk rehearses and refreshes tradition.

The poem’s “variously cracked / slabs of concrete each / block yet greets the / wheels with” are the clunky opposite of free association, are planes for walking forced by weather into a union of fissures that brokenly leads, following the course of “right” as opposed to sinister, of letters (“y”), and Arabic numerals (“2nd and 3rd is still / tree-lined and aristocratic / as feint”), this latter an accurate and surprising characterization that comically frustrates our expectation for another “f” word and supplies one that suggests half-hearted pretense. The city is a place of artifice. A reason to love it; a reason to be wary.

The Y’s “aristocratic” arm is a sidewalk surprisingly resembling a great poet’s face: one who once flaneured the same streets; once advised, I’m told, that “the secret of walking in New York is jaywalking.” How killingly accurate, those “smoked cheeks”—the mask of tobacco combined with age, a look both preserved and ravaged.

A languorous, pleasurable word for dislike appears: “loathe,” surprisingly followed by “amiably”—and this walk has received its full and rightful depiction.

But wait,  in the quietus of her sleep, the baby must be named. Because “Sylvie” means “woodsy,” she is angel of the city and of the poem. In “What the Streets Look like,” Anselm Berrigan masters the improvisational essential, which is to say, the right kind.

-Angela Ball

        

Go to Source
Author: Angela Ball