Ted Berrigan – Get The Money!

As Anselm Berrigan notes, in his intelligent and insightful introduction to this book (so pleased to see it, and kudos to all involved in this project!), Get The Money!  is a joyous (well, mostly joyous) posthumous gathering and (immensely entertaining) miscellany, consisting of, “private journals, journals written for eventual publication, books and magazine reviews, short and longer reviews of art exhibitions, translations, procedural/collage pieces chased by a version of definition that can’t catch up, fabricated interviews, reports ranging from satirical letters to birth announcement, and book reviews written in lines from the book reviewed…”

He goes on – “He (Ted) was, as far as I can tell, interested in the ways anyone’s work might be interesting, and in the ways each person might be interesting, and where those points of interest could merge.How to live and how to convert the conventions we all socially and culturally absorb into strengths instead of weaknesses.”

“His prose reflects a commitment to the arts without putting a barrier between friendship and something like content”

“(Ted) read widely, found things to study and admire in work by minds drastically different from his, and enjoyed trying on the costumes of prosody (poetic music) all kinds of other poets’ work offered. Poetry was the primary vehicle for the movement and performance of his studies, but prose created a parallel space – one where opinion could be treated as a handle…”

The young Ted Berrigan’s 1961 (March 13) journal entry:

–  “While in Providence [in 1959] , doing nothing except reading, writing bad poems, and brooding. I slowly came to the conclusion that the best thing I could do in life was to strive for saintliness – that is, to try to be kind to everyone, to hurt no one, to be humble, and to be as much help to people as I cd, by being sympathetic, a listener, a friend. This attitude was bought on by my observation of everyone’s unhappiness”

Some days earlier, in March of 1961, he had recorded in his notebooks the experience of witnessing Allen Ginsberg reading “Kaddish” (March 3rd, Allen’s reading for Dorothy Day  at the Catholic Worker):

“Heard Allen Ginsberg read last night at the Catholic Worker Hdqtrs in the Bowery. The reading was on the 2^nd floor of the Newspaper office in a kind of loft. The place was jammed, nearly 150 or 200 there. Ginsberg wore levis and a plain shirt, and a gray suitcoat. His hair is thinning on top and he is getting a little paunchy. He wore thick black rimmed glasses, and looked very Jewish. He is good looking, intellectual appearing and was quiet and reserved, with a humorous glint in his eyes.
He read “Kaddish”, a long poem about his family and the insanity of his mother. It was a very good poem, and a brilliant reading. Ginsberg reads very well, writes a very moving driving line; and the poem contained much dialogue. Ginsberg seems to have a perfect ear for speech rhythm. The poem was based on Jewish Prayers and was very impressive in sections, with a litany-like refrain.
There was much humor in the reading, much pathos, and all in all, it was the most remarkable reading I’ve ever heard, very theatrical, yet very natural. Ginsberg was poised and assured like a Jazz Musician who knows he’s good. At the end someone asked him what meter the Poem was in and he replied, Promethean Natural Meter”

Get the Money –  the Runyon-esque title is both a joke and no joke at all.  Anselm again, from his thought-out and useful introduction, notes that – “(b)uilt in the phrase in Berrigan’s usage is the knowing and amused, if arghifying (sic), implication that “Get” will never become “Got” in any permanent sense, but could happen temporarily on the fly and might be anybody’s reason for a particular decision..”

Further journal observation:

“Nov 16, 1962  ..but I am still confused about the AMOUNT of control a writer should have over his writing (or CONSCIOUS CONTROL)”

“Nov 22, 1962 –  As for me, I keep going, keep worrying, keep feeling alone in a good way, keep keeping my own counsel. I don’t know hardly anything, yet I know more than everyone  I see or know, It’s discouraging. Every sage turns seducer upon close contact.”

“Feb 10,  1963   – I want to write poems that cannot be understood until they are felt. They must be read and then must germinate in the brain until they flower. Then they will be apparent but still they cannot be paraphrased with any meaning for others. Each reader must make something out of them himself, w/o effort.”

Allen was in attendance at Ted’s reading with Harry Fainlight (at Café La Mama May 10, 1964).

His obituary notice on Fainlight in the book, originally published in The Poetry Project Newsletter, is only one of any number of stellar pieces published here, and fittingly concludes the book)

Here’s Berrigan on Jack Kerouac:

“Jack Kerouac’s writings are one of the pleasures of our time. His books are funny, absurd, sweet, and full of love (as well as sorrow), he is an incomparable storyteller, one whose divagations can give us much pleasure as if they were essential to his stories, which in fact they are…”
“…Furthermore he has an infallible ear……Anyone who knows or has talked to Neal Cassady knows where it comes from, but it stands as a fact that only Kerouac can write it the way Neal Cassady talks. Kerouac had the genius to know when he heard it, and he has the genius to make it his own. On the page that diction, those sounds, are not Neal Cassady talking but Jack Kerouac including “bop prose…”

“Since I got into this let me add that William Burroughs is another exponent of American diction. Burroughs, however, is somewhere else. He’s the Medicine Man from St Louis, been around a long time. He’s here to sell us something, cure our aches and pains and provide a little entertainment too…”

& Ted on his master, Frank O’Hara –  “He has a knack for evoking the immediacy of people, places, and objects in a very exciting way, and with an honesty that is not only breathtaking  but appalling. O”Hara’s  breadth of awareness is startling, and it is this wide range of awareness that makes his honesty so interesting. He risks everything on recalling his accuracy of feeling. The  reward for this daring is an intensity of emotional reality that infuses the life in his poems, i.e. the people, places, objects, relationships with an electric richness..”

So too with Ted’s own poems.

More Ted Berrigan on….Ted Berrigan  (well, actually it’s Joe Brainard) – “His work suggests a sweet and gentle seriousness, not to be interpreted as conscience, and his style is almost a handwriting.”

Among the countless gems here, “Scorpio Birthday” (a translation from Max Jacob and Claude Valence),  “On The Road Again, an Old Man” (the luminous Basho translation), the legendary “fake” John Cage interview, pithy sentences  (“The Short (Art) Reviews”), vivid attention to peers and friends

(and woe betide the pompous fools, “jack-offs’ – “I’ll let you know by never letting you know” – however, he does let you know – (Seymour Krim and Harold Rosenberg among those mercilessly eviscerated)

The book begins with a great quote from Alfred North Whitehead, at once exciting and disturbing – “Whatever is going to happen is already happening”

and ends with that lovely obituary note on Harry Fainlight  –  “Goodbye old friend”

& Hello old friend! –  dear Ted – talking again in tranquility