Ted Berrigan

Ted Berrigan (1934 – 1983) is one of the most important figures in Jim Carroll’s life and work. Having just published his first book of poems, Organic Trains, in 1967 (when he was 18), Carroll gave a copy of the book to Berrigan, one of his literary idols. Berrigan published what was probably the first literary article about Carroll in Culture Hero in 1969, describing this meeting and raving about his writing. It was Ted Berrigan who took Carroll to Maine to meet Jack Kerouac.

Carroll absolutely adored Berrigan, and the feeling was mutual. Carroll dedicated many poems to Berrigan, including “Living at the Movies” (in the book of the same title) and “Calm Under Fire” in the “New Work” section of Fear of Dreaming. He also offered “special thanks” to Berrigan in The Basketball Diaries. The Book of Nods is dedicated to him and Rosemary Carroll, and I Write Your Name is dedicated to Berrigan and Brian Marnell. Also, Berrigan is featured in “Bigger Than Most” (63-65), “Central Park, Late Fall” (71-72), “The Bells” (72-74), and “The Loft Party” (101-110) in Forced Entries. Likewise, Berrigan dedicated many poems to Carroll. Click here to read Berrigan’s “Tough Brown Coat,” “Heroin,” and “Something Amazing Just Happened.”

The two poets collaborated so closely that is usually impossible to discuss the resulting works in terms of “influence.” The permutations of words and phrases found in Carroll’s “Living at the Movies” are characteristic of Berrigan’s style, which clearly influenced Carroll. But collaboration more accurately describes the relationship between the two poets. One direct collaboration is “Aunt Winnie fingers the thunder to learn,” published in Berrigan’s In The Early Morning Rain (1970). But you’re usually not going to find both poets’ names on a poem. More often than not, they would start with exactly the same concept and produce completely different pieces. Here’s a good example:

My favorite example of mutual collaboration is “People Who Died,” title of a poem by Berrigan and of Jim Carroll’s most famous song. These works emerged from a collaboration circa 1968, during which Carroll came up with a line Berrigan liked: Those are people who died, died. According to Carroll, Berrigan told him the repetition of “died” is what made it work.

Carroll has continued to pay homage to his mentor. For example, in his spoken-word performances, Carroll often reads an unpublished version of the Void of Course (1998) poem “Facts” that borrows this fact from Berrigan’s poem “Sunday Morning (for Lou Reed)”:

It’s a fact If you stroke a cat about 1,000,000 times, you will
generate enough electricity to light up the largest
American flag in the world for about one minute.

Berrigan appears in Poetry in Motion and on The Dial-A-Poem Poets, along with Carroll and others.

Learn more about Berrigan on Wikipedia.