Come In Alone
"For Brooklyn poet Anselm Berrigan, the political arrives in pieces, settling across his sprawling poems like dew or debris. Berrigan has always matched his experimental drive with a personable quality."—Michael Brodeur, Boston Globe
"Anselm Berrigan's voice continues be one of the most refreshing in contemporary American poetry." —Virginia Konchan, Galatea Resurrects
In Come in Alone, Anselm Berrigan plays with space like a painter with the prosody of a poet. Written as infinitely looping sentences around the page, the poems act as a frame to space, outrunning thought with quickness, openness, humor, and protest. They are simultaneously inviting and impermeable, making familiar language uncanny with every turn around the page.
pre-labor stress with all-star fatigue as day glo habit turning exquisite grime into corners
Anselm Berrigan is the current poetry editor for the Brooklyn Rail, and co-editor with Alice Notley and Edmund Berrigan of the Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (U. California, 2005) and the Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan (U. California, 2011). From 2003 to 2007 he was Artistic Director of The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church, where he also hosted the Wednesday Night Reading Series for four years. He is Co-Chair of Writing at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts interdisciplinary MFA program, and also teaches part-time at Brooklyn College. He was awarded a 2015 Process Space Residency by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and in 2014 he was awarded a Robert Rauschenberg Residency by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. He was a New York State Foundation for the Arts fellow in Poetry for 2007, and has received three grants from the Fund for Poetry. He lives in New York City, where he also grew up.
Anselm Berrigan is the author of six books of poetry: Primitive State (Edge, 2015), Notes from Irrelevance (Wave Books, 2011), Free Cell (City Lights Books, 2009), Some Notes on My Programming (Edge, 2006), Zero Star Hotel (Edge, 2002), and Integrity and Dramatic Life (Edge, 1999). He is also co-author of two collaborative books: Loading, with visual artist Jonathan Allen (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2013), and Skasers, with poet John Coletti (Flowers & Cream, 2012). He is the current poetry editor for The Brooklyn Rail, and co-editor with Alice Notley and Edmund Berrigan of The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (U. California, 2005) and the Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan (U. California, 2011). From 2003-2007 he was Artistic Director of The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, where he also hosted the Wednesday Night Reading Series for four years. He is Co-Chair, Writing at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts interdisciplinary MFA program, and also teaches part-time at Brooklyn College. He was awarded a 2015 Process Space Residency by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and in 2014 he was awarded a Robert Rauschenberg Residency by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. He was a New York State Foundation for the Arts fellow in Poetry for 2007, and has received three grants from the Fund for Poetry. He lives in New York City, where he also grew up.
