Full Description
In his latest collection, Don't Forget to Love Me, Anselm Berrigan is at his most intimate, allowing us to tag along through the immediate histories of present moments in poems that were primarily written at the height of the pandemic. In reading these poems, we are permitted to witness their creation, as Berrigan pivots between semiotic slippage and shrewd assertions, letting the form of each poem take shape as it will, a surprise of sound and sight. In one poem he writes that "poetry / contains / multiple / unresolvable questions / A T / TH E / SLAME / TLIME" and later reminds us "there are / no accidents / in poetry / either." With the same acerbic wit found in Berrigan's previous work, Don't Forget to Love Me is an apogee of politics, pathos, and poetics.
Contents
THEORIES OF INFLUENCE
In Betweener
Press conference
Binge Better
"I would like to have a pounce of pigeons"
The Other Shoe Issue
"She's feeding the local birds"
yes , I knew that I always would
Theories of Influence
Proof ("everything you are gone slightly mad...")
Poem in the Manner of Civilization
Wobble Factory
"broken noseling glides on air, bloken exhaust"
"anticipating a violence that's always coming's"
"applause performed only in fist bumps"
"dodo money powder"
"history by implication nuzzles in fragments"
"live in the agency of self-deprecation, just to mean"
"I wanna hear more about how you feel"
"kind on that note"
"just the layeredness of that"
"narrow bridge with fraught fundamentals caught"
"razor days await"
"sounds' moving shape shapes the unforgiven"
"humans are much more interesting when they're open about"
"uh-oh all of too many wounds lights pointing down"
"the figure in my dream collapse was like what"
"the smart friend explains that we never really touch"
"when we met we talked about what it is to observe"
"the best dork defender, an atomic bomb aesthetic"
JOHN COLETTI IMITATION RACKET
Find My
please keep it concise
John Coletti Zoom Meeting
j.c. imitation #2
"A: 'Will you be voting in the election on Tuesday?'"
"ear pause"
You don't say
You can't soppethy
I understand & wish to proceed
Big Sketchbook Semi-Survival Poems
"Like Real People I lent normal"
"Post-cormorant bar:"
"I will"
Planet Terror
Last Thrift
"Times are dangerous !"
"moon lunar hallucinations"
"forgive the"
"brought to bears"
"junky kitty wants"
"the singer sings"
"I've done my all"
"( get your ass"
"got"
"g"
"poetry"
"The bird watchers tap their lenses"
"your"
"works to the left"
Marcella D. reading—8/16/20—K/S backyard—Hastings on the Hudson
Privacy Mutation Token
II.
from an ongoing untitled poem for Lewis Warsh
Selected Resurrections
"the words get together"
"Vermeer was something of a visitor"
on all my substitute birthdays
Consumer Affairs Unenclosed Sidewalk Cafe License
Self-involved poem for Brandon B. on his Bday
Poem written during a zoom meeting
Poem written just before turning fifty
"You can't keep yourself in sync"
Freegrets
Corner Eye
Still Here
To Cedar
Poem inspired by Everything
Notes
Acknowledgments
