Other Books by Bernadette Mayer
Story
Moving
Memory
Ceremony Latin (1964)
Studying Hunger
Poetry
Eruditio Ex Memoria
The Golden Book of Words
Midwinter Day
Utopia
Incidents Report Sonnets
Mutual Aid
The Art of Science Writing
(with Dale Worsley)
Sonnets
The Formal Field of Kissing
Proper Name & Other Stories
Contents
from Ceremony Latin (1964)
from Story
Story is a novella-length work in which stories interweave in a diamond-shaped structure so that at its center fourteen stories are going on simultaneously. Each section is given a title that is a form of story-telling.
from Poetry and early poems
Corn
Pope John
Index
Yellow-Orange
Laura Cashdollars
François Villon Follows the Thin Lion
Tapestry
Thick
Poem
An Ancient Degree
Swan Silvertones
America
The Port
Dante
Counterhatch
It Moves Across
Sonnet: “name address date”
X ON PAGE 50 at half-inch intervals
The Red Rose Doesn’t, The Rose Is Red Does
Gay Full Story
The Way to Keep Going in Antarctica
from Moving
Moving is a prose book written while living for three seasons in the woods of the Northeast, its intention being to write only when it seemed absolutely necessary. Moving includes contributions from Ed, Rosemary, Grace, Paul, Mr. Murphy, Tom, Larry, Lewis, Hannah, Neil, two Annes, two Kathleens, Jonathan, Milt and others.
from Memory
Memory is a journal of the month of July 1971 based on notes and writings, and a series of 1,116 slides (36 pictures shot every day). Memory was commissioned by Holly Solomon and exhibited in 1972 in her 98 Greene Street gallery in the form of a 4’ x 48’ chronological display of snapshots made from the slides, accompanied by an eight-hour tape of the text.
from Studying Hunger
Studying Hunger consists of two lectures culled from the 400-page Studying Hunger Journals, an experiment in recording states of consciousness.
from The Golden Book of Words
Eve of Easter
Lookin Like Areas of Kansas
Essay
Carlton Fisk Is My Ideal
The End of the Human Reign on Bashan Hill
What Babies Really Do
Instability (Weather)
Very Strong February
from Midwinter Day
Midwinter Day is a 120-page work in prose and poetry written on December 22, 1978, from notes, tapes, photographs, and memory. It divides the day into six parts: dreams, morning, noontime, afternoon, evening, and night.
from The Desires of Mothers to
Please Others in Letters
The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters is a series of letters never sent, written to unidentified friends, acquaintances, political figures, and poets over a nine-month period and ending with the birth of a baby. It is dedicated to Margaret DeCoursey.
from Utopia
Utopia is a traditional utopia dedicated to Grace Murphy and written with the help of Bob Holman, Bill Berkson, Huang O, Rosemary Mayer, Anne Waldman, Rochelle Kraut, Hannah Weiner, Joe Brainard, Charles Bernstein, John Fisk, Lorna Smedman, Lewis Warsh, Anne Rower, Greg Masters, Peggy DeCoursey, and others. It contains a utopian copyright, an Imprimatur from the Archbishop of Nowhere, and an index.
from Mutual Aid
Concluding Unscientific Postscript
Watching the Complex Train-Track Changes
A Woman I Mix Men Up . . .
Eight Blocks
The Garden
from Sonnets
Sonnets is a series of seventy-two poems based on that form and dedicated to Rosemary Mayer.
Sonnet: “Love is a babe . . .”
Sonnet: “It would be nice . . .”
Warren Phinney
Holding the Thought of Love
Sonnet: “I am supposed to think . . .”
A Chinese Breakfast
Sonnet: “You jerk you didn’t call me . . .”
Sonnet: “Other than what’s gone on . . .”
We Eat Out Together
Homeopathic Busyness
Incidents Report Sonnet
Incidents Report Sonnet #2
Incidents Report Sonnet #5
Sonnet: “ash . . .”
Sonnet We Are Ordinary C’mere
Sonnet: “To perform for you . . .”
Sonnet: “Beauty of songs . . .”
Incandescent War Poem Sonnet
Clap Hands
Sonnet: “You read about Uranus . . .”
The Phenomenon of Chaos
from The Formal Field of Kissing
The Formal Field of Kissing is a book of translations, imitations, and epigrams from the work of ancient Greek and Latin poets, especially Catullus.
Catullus #48
Catullus #99
After Catullus and Horace
Large Imitation Classical Lune
Hendecasyllables on Catullus #33
Catullus #67
Two from the Greek Anthology
New Poems
The Incorporation of Sophia’s Cereal
Max Carries the One
Ode on
“First turn to me . . .”
I Am Told I Must Bomb the Tappan Zee Bridge
scifi lee ann
Sonnet: “Suck me my virgin . . .”
Marie You Must Meet Cristina at the Music School Tomorrow and Not at Her Home
I Want to Talk Now about Reason, Riddle
I Wish You Were Up Late, Gerard
The Guild
Death Is a Cambric Fabric
Sonnet: “a little tiny poem . . .”
The Ballad of Theodore
Sonnet: “Swell is the attribute . . .”
Mums
Failures in Infinitives
Say Goodbye to Legacy
Beginning Middle End
Experimentation in Rubrics
Manicatriarchic Sonnet
Marie Makes Fun of Me at the Shore
Acknowledgments
world haunts back of mind like lens
from Ceremony Latin (1964)
from Story
In the slightest degree one of these begins to be opposite the other and every thing does the following: with little above more below and much still lower it is closer to one of these than it is to the other and each thing does this: it presents the other thing.
Anecdote
A chance to cut, fold, wrap, and tie.
One day was the day to start, that day only in the sun, rain, snow, hail, sleet, or shade.
Profile
A fall may make ends meet—the head meets with the foot or the head with the end of the street, anyway it’s a way of ending up or down.
Life Story
To start.
The formation of these things.
Since the end is here or makes an appearance, this or another one will come again later, if it could when once is enough but since probably it must—it’s end to end.
After a while a struggle stops.
And a riddle stops.
What did the rose do to the cypress?
Every one of these of that thing of one of those has its own things.
O
ne day once and then once again.
A showy flower, pink or white, must have been planted a while ago.
These are opposite each other in space.
They are suited to those things under which they are meant to live.
Once again, here, makes it a different story.
Something made up in the mind.
To come into being.
In all many things may fall.
Except for those that are connected with those others, they are all bound by those things of that thing within the other thing assigned to them.
All stories at least are not the same.
Something put down or round about.
Accents fall.
Nor is this the case only on that.
In any case one day—it wasn’t two . . .
A small statue.
Apples fall.
Those, these, and those others might be seen as the things keeping them within certain things.
. . . one day I fell several times, perhaps three or four times; each fall took place at a different time of the day or during a different part. I might say I fell morning noon and night, or, I made a day of falling down, or, I fell having fallen twice before, but not, I fell apart.
Dancers on the stage don’t fall but buildings do.
This as well as that has its things bound within those.
I stumbled at times due to things.
The feminine of this, dresses fall.
One of those as to the effect of that will explain this.
On one thing, over one, and then, on account of none but because of something made up in the mind.
To be or do in the slightest degree.
Estates fall.
Scenario
We all live under some of this and that.
Saga
The first of five makes a waterfall and a trap; it calls to him when it becomes full.
Love Story
Which is an engine and which is a stone?
One of those (or more than one, of more than one of those things).
Eyes fall.
Now, thirty-two of those under that doubles that thing since . . .
His bales of sliced smoked salmon roll along behind him (the first of five), knocking him down.
To cause to start.
It could only be shown with pictures—in its original sense, and not shown in another sense, other than the sense of the mind’s eye—which is which.
. . . a thing of this, thirty-two of those in that is equal in that other to the thing of one of these.
Things fall through a hole in his pack, until he patches it.
Fiction
For three hundred years people may have done this, stumbled, perhaps for a longer time.
In another sense.
An inside thing, glances fall.
To commence.
At this of thirty-two of these, then, anyone is under that thing of two of those—that of this, and of one of those of that thing equal to it.
He roasts cabbages in hot ashes, and sends them out to people whose relationships are ended.
But, that many years ago, a person did fall perhaps more than once or even three or four times.
An outline or shape, as of the human body.
Governments fall.
At sixty-four of these he is under that thing of three of those, and so on.
He models girls from bark.
On a thing then, over one, or simply because of one, whether real or imaginary.
Leaves fall.
That of one of these is always added for every thirty-two of those of that other.
He pretends to die, and is buried with his face exposed.
Lie
Orange upholstered pouf chair.
Some things are still and still they show.
For example, a tree.
To cause to come into being.
Meetings fall.
There is a great thing in that of those.
The girls walk over him (he modeled them).
Enameled metal desk lamp.
Where is there one?
To originate.
News falls.
Some of these live at a great one of those and find this and that genial to them.
He arrives and wants to sleep with them.
A setting into motion of some action, process, or course: as, to begin this or that.
Laminated wood rocker, leather seat.
A tree lasts for many years.
On the side, poems fall into two categories: these and those.
Others would be killed at once by the same thing.
They desert him.
Tubular metal chair.
It is there at the beginning of them, and then, at the end of them.
To begin a ceremony or an elaborate course of events: as, to commence something or other.
Prices fall.
These naturally seek those that are shallower.
He travels making waterfalls and dams.
Tubular metal table, glass top.
You can stumble on anything, even over ten feet tall, as trees are, especially over ten feet tall if it is small enough, as it would be written or fallen.
To do this out.
Prizes fall.
Everyone knows that he must throw a long one for those.
To leave a point of departure in any kind of progression: as, to start something, something started something.
He marries and has a son.
Planter lamp.
Written down or falling down.
To carry out the first steps in some course or progress with no indication of what is to follow: as, to initiate Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, etc.
Rivers fall.
With a common one, though, he will catch plenty of them from those things near it.
Corn
Corn is a small hard seed.
Corn from Delft
Is good for elves.
White corn, yellow, Indian
Is this kernel a kernel of corn?
The corn they sought
Was sown by night.
The Corn Islands are two small islands,
Little Corn Island and Great Corn Island,
on an interoceanic canal route.
Any of several
insects that bore in maize is a corn borer.
Pope John
Noah spoke singly
sucking Calliope’s throat
and Cheops sat
in a sort of jeep
hoping for rain.
corn pone said Aunt No-No.
Pop is in a hodge-podge.
Edgar Poe, supposed a hen.
o poop deck
o epic poem
Joe, John, and Joel Oppenheimer
went home.
Index
a briar, a blunder, a bungalow
-awning
Spelling is becoming more
briar Steward
blunder
bungalow
tawdry
the blunder, a briar, a bungalow
Tradition
tuck
Yellow-Orange
my jig was a sage ear
the mirror focuses on warm fog
wise marrow ram, queer fig,
curious razor smear in a coffee mist
the war was a sexic soar for merry rims.
As far as I come,
the sow and the ram wager
wish arrows.
various Sim is a coxic rage,
my soul
wax saumurai
swore on his swarm rock arrow
come with a quick wag of veer
carry sex
ask ear’s frame
carcer rim
game in a jock axe searing
and curry the same maze
in exotic
sez the worm
in cox in jam
Laura Cashdollars
cut mats are even
come to rest when
cut mats securing
the park bits to
poor Laura secure
as yet with still
less to neck than
the drink as four
corners the stick
to mix the fourth with.
François Villon Follows
the Thin Lion
for Bill Berkson
fill the tin voodoos
Ovid’s dill moon, the doffers hunt
to loop.
doll-less in linnets.
Dillon pilfers oolfoos, fin-lips!
the thinning third
of avoir dupois.
Huns unlid at the onicker’s kiln
a flint and a linx,
the infinite minnow.
off lightning
fools lift digits
the lieutenant fills the ocean
give him onions.
Tapestry
secret as mummies
the wild psychoanalysts
grow
more sleek
than hundred-dollar
-a-night girls
noses and anuses
turned to Bach
Springbok the Manycolored
is calm again
as a day of the week.
demons scatter museum pieces
carrots,
blood,
a grandmother.
Thick
Hashish the Ghost is rumored dead
the slow boor had the rheum
worm and bug gagging him
higher than a gourd shouting whoosh
a shower and the rum you piggish shrew
to oust your mother from the same shroud as you
Owl, bitch, hog and whore met at the bog’s mouth
to bludgeon the womb
it was only a gag
at least the author’s brought his luger
he’s ogling that myth
a gob of rum for the wretch with the hookah
the oil-rout grew
bulging the gulch with rush & shout
there boils the ocean.
Poem
I am beginning to alter
the location of this harbor
now meets with a channel
joining one place with one.