Poetry. Anselm Berrigan gives us a fresh dose of his discordant mind music. TO HELL WITH SLEEP was written by the poet in the first months after the birth of his daughter, mostly during brief periods of time when he was half-awake or less so, letting the poetry be unthought within its vehicle of eight seven-line slanting stanzas per session, of which there were nine. The impulse driving the writing was to let sounds-turning-toward-words follow from the intensified state of consciousness the arrival of this baby initiated. No prescience, reflection, computer tricks, formal appropriation, or plotting of any kind was used in the writing of this work. Joy, fear, humor, sound, bafflement and recognition-in-exchange-for-recognition were the instruments. Other Anselm Berrigan titles available from SPD are SOME NOTES ON MY PROGRAMMING, ZERO STAR HOTEL, and INTEGRITY & DRAMATIC LIFE.

Author Hometown: NEW YORK, NY USA



About the author: Anselm Berrigan (born 1972 in Chicago, Illinois) is a poet and teacher. He grew up in New York City, where he currently resides with his wife, poet Karen Weiser. From 2003 to 2007, he served as artistic director at the St. Mark's Poetry Project. He is the brother of poet and musician Edmund Berrigan, half-brother of Kate Berrigan and scientist David Berrigan, son of poets Alice Notley and the late Ted Berrigan, and stepson of the late English poet and prose writer Douglas Oliver. He has also lived in Buffalo, NY at the "Ranch" and was known lovingly as "Anton" in San Francisco, CA. He is a co-chair of the writing program at the Bard College summer MFA program and a professor at Wesleyan University. He has also taught writing at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Pratt Institute, and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa.

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