A Bernadette Mayer Reader

“What a clear, insistent health there is here––as if the so-called world were seriously the point, which it is, and we could actually live in it, which we do. Truly this is the best How To book I've read in years. Bernadette Mayer makes a various world of real people in real times and places, a fact of love and loving use. She has impeccable insight and humor. She is a consummate poet no matter what’s for supper or who eats it. Would that all genius were as generous.” —Robert Creeley

from Ceremony Latin (1964)

xi

from Story

Story is a novella-length work in which stories interweave in a diamond-shaped structure so that at its center fourteen stories are going on simultaneously. Each section is given a title that is a form of story-telling

1

(5)

from Poetry and early poems

Corn

6

(1)

Pope John

7

(1)

Index

8

(1)

Yellow-Orange

9

(1)

Laura Cashdollars

10

(1)

Francois Villon Follows the Thin Lion

11

(1)

Tapestry

12

(1)

Thick

13

(1)

Poem

14

(2)

An Ancient Degree

16

(1)

Swan Silvertones

17

(2)

America

19

(1)

The Port

20

(1)

Dante

21

(1)

Counterhatch

22

(2)

It Moves Across

24

(2)

Sonnet: ``name address date''

26

(1)

X On Page 50 at half-inch intervals

27

(2)

The Red Rose Doesn't, The Rose Is Red Does

29

(1)

Gay Full Story

30

(2)

The Way to Keep Going in Antarctica

32

(2)

from Moving

Moving is a prose book written while living for three seasons in the woods of the Northeast, its intention being to write only when it seemed absolutely necessary. Moving includes contributions from Ed, Rosemary, Grace, Paul, Mr. Murphy, Tom, Larry, Lewis, Hannah, Neil, two Annes, two Kathleens, Jonathan, Milt and others

34

(3)

from Memory

Memory is a journal of the month of July 1971 based on notes and writings, and a series of 1,116 slides (36 pictures shot every day). Memory was commissioned by Holly Solomon and exhibited in 1972 in her 98 Greene Street gallery in the form of a 4' x 48' chronological display of snapshots made from the slides, accompanied by an eight-hour tape of the text

37

(5)

from Studying Hunger

Studying Hunger consists of two lectures culled from the 400-page Studying Hunger Journals, an experiment in recording states of consciousness

42

(5)

from The Golden Book of Words

Eve of Easter

47

(2)

Lookin Like Areas of Kansas

49

(2)

Essay

51

(2)

Carlton Fisk Is My Ideal

53

(2)

The End of the Human Reign on Bashan Hill

55

(2)

What Babies Really Do

57

(3)

Instability (Weather)

60

(1)

Very Strong February

61

(2)

from Midwinter Day

Midwinter Day is a 120-page work in prose and poetry written on December 22, 1978, from notes, tapes, photographs, and memory. It divides the day into six parts: dreams, morning, noontime, afternoon, evening, and night

63

(5)

from The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters

The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters is a series of letters never sent, written to unidentified friends, acquaintances, political figures, and poets over a nine-month period and ending with the birth of a baby. It is dedicated to Margaret DeCoursey

68

(4)

from Utopia

Utopia is a traditional utopia dedicated to Grace Murphy and written with the help of Bob Holman, Bill Berkson, Huang O, Rosemary Mayer, Anne Waldman, Rochelle Kraut, Hannah Weiner, Joe Brainard, Charles Bernstein, John Fisk, Lorna Smedman, Lewis Warsh, Anne Rower, Greg Masters, Peggy DeCoursey, and others. It contains a utopian copyright, an Imprimatur from the Archbishop of Nowhere, and an index

72

(5)

from Mutual Aid

Concluding Unscientific Postscript

77

(2)

Watching the Complex Train-Track Changes

79

(2)

A Woman I Mix Men Up

81

(2)

Eight Blocks

83

(1)

The Garden

84

(3)

from Sonnets

Sonnets is a series of seventy-two poems based on that form and dedicated to Rosemary Mayer

Sonnet: ``Love is a babe . . .''

87

(1)

Sonnet: ``It would be nice . . .''

88

(1)

Warren Phinney

89

(1)

Holding the Thought of Love

90

(1)

Sonnet: ``I am supposed to think . . .''

91

(1)

A Chinese Breakfast

92

(1)

Sonnet: ``You jerk you didn't call me . . .''

93

(1)

Sonnet: ``Other than what's gone on . . .''

94

(1)

We Eat Out Together

95

(1)

Homeopathic Busyness

96

(1)

Incidents Report Sonnet

97

(1)

Incidents Report Sonnet #2

98

(1)

Incidents Report Sonnet #5

99

(1)

Sonnet: ``ash . . .''

100

(1)

Sonnet We Are Ordinary C'mere

101

(1)

Sonnet: ``To perform for you . . .''

102

(1)

Sonnet: ``Beauty of songs . . .''

103

(1)

Incandescent War Poem Sonnet

104

(1)

Clap Hands

105

(1)

Sonnet: ``You read about Uranus . . .''

106

(1)

The Phenomenon of Chaos

107

(1)

from The Formal Field of Kissing

The Formal Field of Kissing is a book of translations, imitations, and epigrams from the work of ancient Greek and Latin poets, especially Catullus

Catullus #48

108

(1)

Catullus #99

109

(1)

After Catullus and Horace

110

(1)

Large Imitation Classical Lune

111

(2)

Hendecasyllables on Catullus #33

113

(1)

Catullus #67

114

(3)

Two from the Greek Anthology

117

(1)

New Poems

The Incorporation of Sophia's Cereal

118

(1)

Max Carries the One

119

(1)

Ode on

120

(1)

``First turn to me . . .''

121

(3)

I Am Told I Must Bomb the Tappan Zee Bridge

124

(1)

scifi lee ann

125

(1)

Sonnet: ``Suck me my virgin . . .''

126

(1)

Marie You Must Meet Cristina at the Music School Tomorrow and Not at Her Home

127

(2)

I Want to Talk Now about Reason, Riddle

129

(1)

I Wish You Were Up Late, Gerard

130

(1)

The Guild

131

(1)

Death Is a Cambric Fabric

132

(2)

Sonnet: ``a little tiny poem . . .''

134

(1)

The Ballad of Theodore

135

(2)

Sonnet: ``Swell is the attribute . . .''

137

(1)

Mums

138

(1)

Failures in Infinitives

139

(3)

Say Goodbye to Legacy

142

(2)

Beginning Middle End

144

(1)

Experimentation in Rubrics

145

(1)

Manicatriarchic Sonnet

146

(1)

Marie Makes Fun of Me at the Shore

147

(1)

Acknowledgments

148

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A Bernadette Mayer Reader

Summary

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials