{"id":9531,"date":"2025-05-21T17:40:01","date_gmt":"2025-05-22T00:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/?page_id=9531"},"modified":"2025-05-21T20:29:21","modified_gmt":"2025-05-22T03:29:21","slug":"ted-berrigan","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/background\/friends-influences\/important-people-in-carrolls-life-and-work\/artistic-influences-mentors-supporters\/ted-berrigan\/","title":{"rendered":"Ted Berrigan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Ted<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Ted Berrigan (1934 – 1983)<\/strong> is one of the most important figures in Jim Carroll’s life and work. Having just published his first book of poems,\u00a0Organic Trains<\/a><\/em>, 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\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0about Carroll in\u00a0Culture Hero<\/em>\u00a0in 1969, describing this meeting and raving about his writing. It was Ted Berrigan who took Carroll to Maine to meet\u00a0Jack Kerouac<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a>) and “Calm Under Fire” in the “New Work” section of Fear of Dreaming<\/a><\/em>. He also offered “special thanks” to Berrigan in The Basketball Diaries<\/em>. The Book of Nods<\/em> is dedicated to him and Rosemary Carroll, and I Write Your Name<\/em> 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<\/em>. Likewise, Berrigan dedicated many poems to Carroll. Click here<\/strong><\/a> to read Berrigan’s “Tough Brown Coat,” “Heroin,” and “Something Amazing Just Happened.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a>,” published in Berrigan’s In The Early Morning Rain (1970). <\/em>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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

10 Things I Do Every Day<\/strong>
by Ted Berrigan<\/strong>

wake up
smoke pot
see the cat
love my wife
think of Frank
eat lunch
make noises
sing songs
go out
dig the streets
go home for dinner
read the Post
make pee-pee
two kids
grin
read books
see my friends
get pissed-off
have a Pepsi
disappear<\/p>\n\n\n\n

10 Things I Do When I Shoot Up*
by Jim Carroll
<\/strong>
go to the mirror
comb my hair down straight
put on the Velvet Underground
nod out
my silver ring
read tiny poems
outline each future
everything fine
watch a Sherlock Holmes movie
check to see how much is left
go to the restaurants and flirt
sing I shall be released
nod out
giant beds with everyone I know
no sex

*from <\/em>Another World<\/em> <\/a>(1970)<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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

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<\/a> <\/em>(1998) poem “Facts” that borrows this fact from Berrigan’s poem “Sunday Morning (for Lou Reed)”:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Berrigan appears in Poetry in Motion<\/em> and on The Dial-A-Poem Poets<\/em>, along with Carroll and others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learn more about Berrigan on <\/strong>Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/strong>
 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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,\u00a0Organic 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\u00a0article\u00a0about … Continue reading Ted Berrigan<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":9419,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"folder":[13],"class_list":["post-9531","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P9VlUH-2tJ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4530,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/works\/literary-works\/jim-carrolls-collaborations-with-other-artists\/","url_meta":{"origin":9531,"position":0},"title":"Jim Carroll’s Collaborations with other Artists","author":"catholicboy.com","date":"January 10, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Home > Books > Collaborations Jim Carroll's Collaborations with other Artists Updated 4 January 2009 A Crack Up at the Race Riots Published: 1998 By: Harmony Korine Publisher: Main Street Books Description: Includes (uncredited) collaborations with Carroll on fictional suicide notes, including \"Letter from Tupac Shakur #2, to a Nineteen-Year-Old\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4171,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/works\/articles-poems-by-jim-carroll\/aunt-winnie-fingers-the-thunder-to-learn\/","url_meta":{"origin":9531,"position":1},"title":"Aunt Winnie fingers the thunder to learn . . .","author":"catholicboy.com","date":"January 10, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"By Ted Berrigan and Jim CarrollFrom In The Early Morning Rain by Ted BerriganCape Goliard Press, 1970. Aunt Winnie fingers thethunder to learn,so that we have left everything asidebut not as a cloud mind steps besidethe slow reservoirnow it is all of this, the pink bulbs included,which means we have\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4035,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/photos-video-audio\/photo-gallery\/the-jim-carroll-website-image-gallery-misc-new-images\/","url_meta":{"origin":9531,"position":2},"title":"The Jim Carroll Website: Image Gallery: Misc. New Images","author":"catholicboy.com","date":"January 10, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"> > Misc. New Images > 8 January 2001 >These are images for which I haven't yet created pages. Portraits Jim Carroll -- Portrait from Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart (PBS) Jim Carroll, Spring 1971 (by Gerard Malanga) Jim Carroll, Ted Berrigan, Lee Crabtree, and Julius Orlovsky (1969) Jim\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9352,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/background\/friends-influences\/important-people-in-carrolls-life-and-work\/artistic-influences-mentors-supporters\/jack-kerouac\/","url_meta":{"origin":9531,"position":3},"title":"Jack Kerouac","author":"Cassie Carter","date":"March 12, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Jack Kerouac In his\u00a0interview with Thomas Gladyz, Carroll talks about the time Ted Berrigan took him to Maine to meet Jack Kerouac. Carroll says: \"it really didn\u2019t go well except that he had read\u00a0The World,\" the St. Mark\u2019s literary magazine that had published Carroll\u2019s early work. Carroll sent Kerouac the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/kerouac.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4174,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/research\/feature-articles\/poems-to-and-about-jim-carroll\/","url_meta":{"origin":9531,"position":4},"title":"Poems to and About Jim Carroll","author":"catholicboy.com","date":"January 10, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Submitted by Index Ted Berrigan: \"Tough Brown Coat\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\"Heroin\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\"Something Amazing Just Happened\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\"In Anne's Place\" Anne Waldman:\u00a0\"Poem for Jim Carroll\" TOUGH BROWN COAT by Ted Berrigan... For Jim Carroll Tough brown coatTie with red rosesGreen cord vestBrown stripeson soft whiteshirtwhite T-shirtWhite man,\u00a0 \u00a0 Tomorrow you die!\"You kidding me?\" HEROIN by Ted Berrigan\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4165,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/works\/articles-poems-by-jim-carroll\/","url_meta":{"origin":9531,"position":5},"title":"Articles & Poems by Jim Carroll","author":"catholicboy.com","date":"January 10, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"\"The Man Who Sold the World.\"\u00a0By Jim Carroll.\u00a0New York Times Book Review, 1 Dec. 2002.Carroll reviews Kurt Cobain's\u00a0Journals: \"It's fascinating like a car wreck, and I, for one, wish that only the music survived his death.\" \"I Shot a Deer.\" By Jim Carroll.\u00a0Gentlemen's Quarterly, January 2002: 113-14.GQ\u00a0asked five writers to\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9531"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9541,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9531\/revisions\/9541"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/folder?post=9531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}