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).

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 (“2^nd and 3^rd 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

Comments

[David Lehman]

Wonderful poem, and excellent analysis. Thanks to you both! I would quote one sentence stretched over the course of numerous line-breaks to reveal the poet's artistry; the element of surprise inherent in a thought that moves from an abstract "nostalgia" that only a New Yorker could feel all the way to the concrete sidewalka and the stroller:

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.