Something for Everybody

Anselm Berrigan’s audience is deservedly broad and loyal: he is among the most respected poets writing in America today, both for his work and for the many hats he wears as editor, educator, and curator. These poems span a period of roughly eight years and help contextualize Berrigan’s numerous other books written during that period. The diversity of the work, both in style and in the topics and objects the poems encounter, is extremely impressive-this is a poet working at incredible visual and sonic capacity. Berrigan’s poems are fast-paced, irreverent, and often funny, capturing the texture of New York life.

Berrigan comes from a family intimately tied to twentieth-century poetics: his mother is acclaimed poet Alice Notley, his father, the acclaimed late poet Ted Berrigan. Berrigan served as Artistic Director of the legendary Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church (2004-2007). He is poetry editor for The Brooklyn Rail and Co-Chair of Writing at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. He also teaches at Pratt Institute and Brooklyn College.