In it PROFILE Newspaper Culture Supplement We offer every week “Narcolepsy – Coordinates for an approach to poetry”, and the chosen one on this occasion is “Even here”, by American Anselm Berrigan:
Is it strange that brands
Authoritarians don’t like this
The practice of professional and critical journalism is a fundamental pillar of democracy. That is why it bothers those who believe they are the owners of the truth.
are called brand
when someone says
What do we mark the occasion?
when you call
Anselm, this is not something
what you think about
even if now
I’m doing, yes this is
think. My apologies.
I was going to start
this on my mind
typing “I am reverting
but I do not know
In what direction.”
Revert in this case
can mean thinking about
Die. It’s not what you want.
But I can’t avoid the course
that this has taken. I doubt
that can really be prepared
to miss someone.
And then you can.
And then you can’t.
And then that absence
to be herself
It ends up being something else.
for Paul & Sarah
(Translation by Patrick Ferrari)
Author of eight books of poetry and numerous chapbooks, Anselm Berrigan (1972, Chicago, Illinois) earned a BA from SUNY Buffalo and an MFA from Brooklyn College. Her poetry collections include: Integrity & Dramatic Life (1999), Zero Star Hotel (2002), Some Notes on My Programming (2006), Free Cell (2009), Notes from Irrelevance (2011), Primitive State (2015), Something for Everybody (2018) y Pregrets (2021).
With his mother, Alice Notley, and brother, Edmund Berrigan, co-edited The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (2005) y Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan (2011). He is the poetry editor of The Brooklyn Rail. He currently resides in New York with his wife, poet Karen Weiser.