Sad news to have to impart, the death of a beloved poet, word-master and word-mistress, Bernadette Mayer, who, at aged 77, passed away peacefully in her home last night. A huge loss. Our deepest sympathies go out to her family (who were there with her) and to her many many friends.
We focused on her earlier this year (on the occasion of her birthday, May 12) with transcription of a 1989 workshop at Naropa where, in lively and true idiosyncratic, entertaining, Bernadette-fashion, she discoursed on the circumstances of the publication of several of her early books – (see here and here) – We followed it with the Q & A (here and here) – and an additional posting – here (delineating more recent publications – which is clearly in need of an updating – New Directions just this month published the wonderful Milkweed Smithereens, “a career-spanning bouquet of poems by the peerless and inimitable Bernadette Mayer”)
“Peerless and inimitable”, that just about sums it up. We are, of course, still coming to terms with this news, reeling and stunned. Saddened – but she has left us with an extraordinary body of work, and an abiding example of honesty of intention, of charisma and inspiration, and for that we are grateful.
More – much more – on Bernadette in the coming days.
I’m so sad and sorry. Thank you for your devotion to Bernadette Mayer over the years – Gillian
I cherish my copy of “Memory.”
Heartfelt condolences to her loving family members Marie, Max, Philip, Sophia, Vera and Zola.
– SF
Bernadette was a beautiful poet, I was just getting to know her work so I am doubly sad to her of her death.
Bernadette and Lewis changed my young life when I was their student in my late teens. It was impossible not to fall in love with both of them. I can remember babysitting for them at least once, and writing sestinas together … and one horrible day, I lost the only copy of one of Lewis’ poems, a disgrace! My sympathy to her children.
Bernadette and I were old soldiers who recognized each other immediately.
“Ye who have abandonment, hang out with me!” she said one afternoon in late 1984 at 172 E. 4th St. and so I did.
On April 9, 2011 Bernadette asked me to review her newly published Studying Hunger Journals (Station Hill Press)a s a sort of birthday gift. The following is the first section of that review – which was published by Exquisite Corpse, Big Bridge and, highly edited, in The Poetry Project Newsletter:
“One afternoon in October of 1985 Bernadette Mayer and I set about photographing the streets of New York’s Lower East Side. Our cameras, however, had no film in them. A practice I was encouraged to do in my foundation year at the School of Visual Arts from which I had graduated a year before. A practice I had either declined or ignored completely for I adhered to the thought that art must be an object, a commodity. It was a practice Bernadette was no stranger to. After viewing a recent show of Willem deKooning’s at the Xavier Fourcade Gallery (and over a few beers on York Ave.) Bernadette had successfully convinced me to join her on this outing, if for nothing else, for the sake of experimentation. I consented.
In 1985, Manhattan’s Lower East Side was still a colorful epicenter for immigrant cultures of varying economic strata, Hell’s Angels, old hippies, ill defined outlaws, drugs and (as Bernadette referred to them) Punk people. Gentrification was ever present, ripening at a slow but noticeable pace. The streets of Alphabet City had not yet been redesigned out of desperation and greed. There remained an air of criminality that darkened the doorways of corner bodegas where, I was told, you could buy a gun if you knew the code. A location brimming over with an onslaught of pictures, an overload of information at every intersection. We shared thoughts and clarified shots while pointing out visual dramas to each other. We walked slowly and were often silent. Our shutters clicked against traffic signals, the sky a penetrating blue, cloudless as only an October sky can be. A handful of memories remain with me – the deep, brilliant yellow of New York taxi cabs, a heady autumnal haze in a sideways shaft of late afternoon light, the softened reflection of a truck in a bakery window. And like Bernadette, I both understand and don’t understand what we found out. As the day faded we made it back to 172 East Fourth street where we sat cross legged, facing each other, drinking a potent tea. At some point Bernadette asked me what I hoped to do as an artist, photographer and poet. A question that, had it been asked by anyone else, would have locked me up in fear, nervousness and confusion. Yet when Bernadette posed the question I felt honored, invigorated, confident in my future. It suddenly seemed that all things were possible and that art could exist outside the realm of precious commodity. Art could be casual, every day, disposable. It could include everything in one’s dailiness and perhaps even exist only for the nourishment and edification of the creator. I was stunned at the revelation. We shared a hearty laugh. Bernadette reached behind her, pulled AD Coleman’s On Photography out from her bottom bookshelf and let me read his review of her work Memory. She also gathered up some notebooks and a copy of Robbe Grillet’s Snapshots. As I readied to leave to head back home to New Jersey Bernadette handed me an impressive stack of notebooks of varying size and thickness. They were, in fact, Studying Hunger Journals as she had written them. An honor I regard highly to this day.”
Since that day in 1985 Bernadette has remained the single most important influence on my life as an artist and photographer. I am most grateful to her as I salute her revolutionary spirit and her prestigious body of innovative works. My love and sympathy to Marie, Sophie, Max and Phil.
I met Bernadette in the mid 80’s at a gig on Broadway downtown where we shared the bill. At the end of the event, she approached me and handed me a poem, out of the blue, and suggested I could set it to music… I asked her what it was. She smiled and said it was a poem from Catullus, in praise of his lover, which she had translated from Latin. The first line was: “ I’d kiss your eyes, three thousand times…” . Well, that felt rather auspicious…. I’d never met Bernadette before, nor did I ever see her again. Just a few years later I finally wrote the song using the poem, which, 35+ years later is on its way to be released in 2023. 🙏 RIP Bernadette, fair winds..!
Mader