Ted Berrigan
Ted Berrigan was an influential American poet known for his distinctive approach to poetry, combining humor and a casual urgency reminiscent of his friend Frank O'Hara. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Berrigan pursued a master's degree in English, though he eventually distanced himself from academia, believing that a poet should solely focus on their craft. Throughout his career, he held various teaching positions, including at the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado. Despite publishing around twenty books, his work received limited recognition from major publishers during his lifetime.
Berrigan played a crucial role in supporting emerging poets and literary magazines, contributing to the vibrant poetry scene in cities like Chicago and New York. He is best known for his innovative sonnet form, particularly as presented in his acclaimed book, "The Sonnets." His work often drew from a wide range of influences, incorporating elements from classical poetry to contemporary philosophy. Unfortunately, his struggles with alcohol and substance abuse contributed to his early death at the age of forty-eight due to cirrhosis of the liver. Berrigan's legacy endures through his unique contributions to poetry, characterized by a blend of experimentation and accessibility.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Ted Berrigan
American poet
- Born: November 15, 1934
- Birthplace: Providence, Rhode Island
- Died: July 4, 1983
- Place of death: New York, New York
Biography
Ted Berrigan had a poet’s career that only a poet in the United States could have. Berrigan received a master’s degree in English but had an intense dislike for academia. He later reasoned that if one is a poet, one must “do that” and nothing else. Nevertheless, Berrigan was fortunate enough to hold teaching positions at the famed Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, at Northwestern University in Chicago as poet-in-residence, at the Poetry Project of St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery in New York City, and finally, toward the end of his life, at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Despite his having published some twenty books, and despite his teaching positions, Berrigan was constantly broke, always borrowing money from his vast collection of friends—money that he invariably was unable to repay. Big publishers ignored his poetry as being too flighty and too comic until after his death. Of all his books, only the posthumous Selected Poems is from a large publisher, Penguin Books, with blurbs on the back from Allen Ginsberg and Robert Creeley.
However, Berrigan was not without friends or influence. Other poets flocked to him wherever he went. In Chicago, he was influential in starting the magazine Milk Quarterly and the Yellow Press, which published his Red Wagon. He also stood behind the Stone Wind poets and their reading series, run by Henry Kanabus. In New York, Angel Hair books would not have existed without Berrigan’s support. Toothpaste Press in Iowa City (later the major Coffee House Publishers) owed a good deal to Berrigan’s influence. In Boulder, the magazine Bombay Gin published its first issue with a cover featuring Berrigan in his underwear.
Born Edmund Joseph Michael Berrigan, Jr., in Providence, Rhode Island, he soon left for the Midwest. From there, he moved to New York City, the one place he would consider home. While still a young man experimenting with poetry, Berrigan met Frank O’Hara, and his life was forever changed. Berrigan was attracted to the casualness and urgency he found in O’Hara’s poetry, and he sought to imbue his own poems with these qualities. Berrigan created a type of poem called “Things to do in (‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗) [fill in the blank].” He wrote these poems in every city he lived in, and in some he visited.
Besides O’Hara, Berrigan met and became good friends with Ron Gallup, Barbara Guest, Kenneth Koch, James Schuyler, and John Ashbery, and he was acquainted with painters Jasper Johns, George Schneeman, and Andy Warhol. All had influences upon the maturing Berrigan. Most of his friends consider his book The Sonnets, written twenty years before his death, to be his greatest achievement.
Berrigan was a great reader, taking in everything from classical poetry and John Cage’s musical notations to Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy and Charles Olson’s poetic principles. Berrigan used much of this material to create his own free-form sonnets, poems that generally lacked meter and rhyme but that employed a sonnet form of fourteen lines that resolved in their ends the issues raised in their beginnings. Berrigan’s sonnets remain interesting examples of experiments in poetic form that started in the 1950’s.
Berrigan was a prolific writer, but his career was hindered by his interest in alcohol and other drugs. He died at age forty-eight from cirrhosis of the liver after suffering from the disease for eight years.
Berrigan injected much-needed humor and elasticity into poetry after the death of Frank O’Hara. Berrigan was known for being a big man with a big beard and a great laugh, someone whose presence dominated the room. He gave and attended countless poetry readings, promoting his own works and encouraging other poets. Until his death, he remained a man who viewed poetry as the poet’s vocation, as the focus of the poet’s life. Berrigan wrote in his poems that he would get up, take some pills with a Pepsi, get his mail, and start upon the daily business of being a poet: sending out manuscripts, answering the mail, and writing—always writing.
Bibliography
Clark, Tom. Late Returns: A Memoir of Ted Berrigan. Bolinas, Calif.: Tombouctou Books, 1985. Includes interesting material from the end of Berrigan’s life.
Notley, Alice. Introduction to Selected Poems, by Ted Berrigan. New York: Penguin Books, 1994. Written by Berrigan’s wife.
Ratcliffe, Stephen, and Leslie Scalapino, eds. Talking in Tranquility: Interviews with Ted Berrigan. Bolinas, Calif.: Avenue B, 1984. Shows both the man’s humor and the seriousness with which he regarded poetry.
Rifkin, Libbie. Career Moves: Olson, Creeley, Zukofsky, Berrigan, and the American Avant-Garde. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. This study of four major American poets— Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Louis Zukofsky, and Berrigan—addresses the question of how writers craft their careers.
Waldman, Anne. Nice to See You: Homage to Ted Berrigan. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1991. An excellent book.