Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. In 1972 Bernadette Mayer began this project as an aid to psychological counseling, writing in parallel journals so that, as she wrote in one (in bed, on subways, at parties, etc.), her psychiatrist read the other. Using colored pens to "color-code emotions," she recorded dreams, events, memories, and reflections in a language at once free-ranging and precise—a work that creates its own poetics. She sought "a workable code, or shorthand, for the transcription of every event, every motion, every transition" of her own mind and to "perform this process of translation" on herself in the interest of evolving an innovative, inquiring language. STUDYING HUNGER JOURNALS registers this intention within a body of poetry John Ashbery has called "magnificent."

Author City: East Nassau, NY USA

Bernadette Mayer was born in Brooklyn, New York, and received her B.A. from the New School for Social Research in 1967. She is the author of more than two dozen volumes of poetry including ETHICS OF SLEEP (2011), Poetry State Forest (2008), Scarlet Tanager (2005), Two Haloed Mourners (1998), ANOTHER SMASHED PINECONE (1998), Proper Name and Other Stories (1996), The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters (1994), The Bernadette Mayer Reader (1992), The Formal Field of Kissing (1990), Sonnets (1989), Midwinter Day (1982), The Golden Book of Words (1978), and CEREMONY LATIN (1964). From 1972 to 1974, Mayer and conceptual artist Vito Acconci edited the journal 0 TO 9, and in 1977 she established United Artists Press with the poet Lewis Warsh. She has taught writing workshops at The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in New York City for many years, and she served as the Poetry Project's director during the 1980s. Bernadette Mayer lives in East Nassau, New York.

Reviews and Other Links
Bernadette Mayer @ PennSound