Dia Publications Spotlight: Anselm Berrigan, “Readings in Contemporary Poetry”

In honor of National Poetry Month, each week we present a poem from our Readings in Contemporary Poetry: An Anthology, edited by Vincent Katz, long-time curator of the eponymous series. This week features an excerpt from Anselm Berrigan’s Notes from Irrelevance (2011). For more poetry programs at Dia, check out our next event in the series, Tribute to Anne Waldman, on Tuesday, May 11, 6 pm.

from Notes from Irrelevance
By Anselm Berrigan

Forgive me. It was time

to make a break for it

and honor a decade’s

worth of complicated

walks. Cosmic intercon-

nection of all beings?

Check. Futility of pain

management as source

of humor in outlook?

Check. Controllable

vices for purposes

of a secondary level 

of interior life, an echo

of conscience trailing 

out? Check. A sense of

time as discontinuous

in its spread while simul-

taneously expanding

on a surface line that

is only a reflection

of a sense of a line?

Check. Total distrust

of command but for the

contradictory moments

of necessity? Half-check.

Digging the ecstasy

of swinging? Yes. Laughing

at the tree? Is the tree

funny? Yes. So what if

the rain is friendlier

than your ever-slithering

definition of work, or

the chip in your pocket

is merely a lifeline for

complaint superseding

the hardy constant tributes

life makes to acceleration

of everything but generosity

freed from the promise 

of entering history as

readable image? There

are little cards offering

digestible portions of

the path with dressings

vouched for by agencies

of seamless repute. Yet

truth is in the uglier

cracks in one’s own

facade, shrink-wrapped

into neglecting decision 

on a most unflattering

scale. What is most

ordinary every day is

defeating the desire to

harden into respectable

indifference.