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Serenade
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 28, 2020
I was staying at Glenn Mott's apartment in 2014, and got to snatching duplicate copies of things on his bookshelves, one of which, recommended by him, or someone he knew, was Serenade. I knew vaguely of Berkson's company but nothing of the work itself. So the book sat on my shelf for six years:
[One] gets lost
a pointless story
but suffused
with recognizable colors
that travel far
time is important
making as it does
elbow room for happenings of note
to occupy quasi-permanent niches
in estimable space
probably you knew all this
because something tells us
as is its wont
and the occasional savage trance-like state
of people in the process of singing
being heard
Six years later, trying to write epigrams like Glenn, I picked up Frank O'Hara -- cuz, after all -- "You're gorgeous and I'm coming" is a great epigram. Part of getting lost here is that when Bill Berkson was 21 years old, about 1961, O'Hara fell in love with him. Was Berkson taking a poetry course from O'Hara's friend, Kenneth Koch? Doesn't matter. Here was the work, on my bookshelf, and a writing practice, Berkson's, kept going through a move to the West Coast in 1970 (about the time Frank O'Hara turned into "a thing"), starting a family, etc. Berkson writes through the mire. I like this book. As to epigrams: "What choice have I to lift as mallet to my stake?"
[One] gets lost
a pointless story
but suffused
with recognizable colors
that travel far
time is important
making as it does
elbow room for happenings of note
to occupy quasi-permanent niches
in estimable space
probably you knew all this
because something tells us
as is its wont
and the occasional savage trance-like state
of people in the process of singing
being heard
Six years later, trying to write epigrams like Glenn, I picked up Frank O'Hara -- cuz, after all -- "You're gorgeous and I'm coming" is a great epigram. Part of getting lost here is that when Bill Berkson was 21 years old, about 1961, O'Hara fell in love with him. Was Berkson taking a poetry course from O'Hara's friend, Kenneth Koch? Doesn't matter. Here was the work, on my bookshelf, and a writing practice, Berkson's, kept going through a move to the West Coast in 1970 (about the time Frank O'Hara turned into "a thing"), starting a family, etc. Berkson writes through the mire. I like this book. As to epigrams: "What choice have I to lift as mallet to my stake?"
March 14, 2026
I can't believe this is my first poetry book in English I love it
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews