Some Notes on My Programming

Poetry. SOME NOTES ON MY PROGRAMMING finds Anselm Berrigan, Artistic Director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church, once more in funny, irritable, tip-top form. Surveying the Bush-era cultural landscape and not liking what it sees, the poetry herein confronts that reality in terms disgusted ("The group is/an asshole./Self-censorship/is the American avant-garde") and terrifying ("Dreamt I was chopping off fingers/of mine with audience. Not cool"), encompassing odd disclosure ("I don't want my brother to get a job ever") and biting satire ("Osama passes/George the bong/bitching about 21st century/hydroponic weed"). And yet, even if we are all just "Trained Meat," as the title of one poem suggests, the work here never gives in to despair; we may be "under attack/in mourning/all at once" but we also "better make//room for each/grief letting/me see what/lines and/lies/not to take/and how/moment/by moment/to be." A fantastic and necessary book.