Scarlett Tanager: Poetry

by Bernadette Mayer

New work from one of America's most original experimental poets. Comprised almost entirely of never-before-collected poems, Scarlet Tanager is Bernadette Mayer's first collection of new work in nearly a decade. Mayer, "one of the most original writers of her generation" ( The Washington Post ), has mixed together here delightful epigrams ("The Mammal Epigram": "Sexually / it's cute"), long-line free verse, and her astonishing sonnets. There are also curious translations of Mayer poems into joking, free-styling French, which are then re-translated back into English, landing somewhere extremely witty and quite some ways from the original. There is no one writing today who can touch Bernadette Mayer for sheer pleasure and throw-away brilliance.

Genres: Poetry

117 pages, Paperback

First published June 27, 2005

About the author

Bernadette Mayer (born May 12, 1945) is an American poet, writer, and visual artist associated with both the Language poets and the New York School. Mayer's record-keeping and use of stream-of-consciousness narrative are two trademarks of her writing, though she is also known for her work with form and mythology. In addition to the influence of her textual-visual art and journal-keeping, Mayer's poetry is widely acknowledged as some of the first to speak accurately and honestly about the experience of motherhood. Mayer edited the journal 0 TO 9 with Vito Acconci, and, until 1983, United Artists books and magazines with Lewis Warsh. Mayer taught at the New School for Social Research, where she earned her degree in 1967, and, during the 1970s, she led a number of workshops at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in New York. From 1980 to 1984, Mayer served as director of the Poetry Project, and her influence in the contemporary avant-garde is felt widely, with writers like Kathy Acker, Charles Bernstein, John Giorno, and Anne Waldman having sat in on her workshops.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are echoes of so many influences in Mayer's poetry. Among the influences, I detect traces of Richard Brautigan, Anne Carson, Gertrude Stein, and Ted Berrigan (among others).

A sequence of poems, loosely connected, integrates references to maple syrup in a way that reminded me of the way Richard Brautigan integrates trout fishing into Trout Fishing in America ...

syrup's up again
day dawns gloomy but birds
have found the feeder at last, march 22, 2003
of course there's a war
bush says, the war is going well
phil's tending the evaporator fire
[...]
- Maple Syrup Sonnet (pg. 27)


the boys are playing frisbee
and the females (sophie & me) are
climbing the tree of my trunks, sorting
letters, non-letters, garbage, poems, etc
in an attempt to find papers i need
- Addendum to Maple Syrup Sonnet (pg. 28)


phil is not the fire
he is (not) the meaning of his name either
except sometimes but soon we'll have
- windy, clear, warm,
hardly any snow left
to harm us? who cares? -
more syrup, it's not ecstatic
[...]
- Maple Syrup Again (pg. 31)


or maybe not your said
anyway we saw the condemned chaos
that you will out in order, bravo!
thanks for the maple syrup too
[...]
- Stargnoc Caz! (pg. 33)

The poem "Large Craft Warnings", with it's use of repetition, elicits comparison to Gertrude Stein...

Working entirely from a cup of water
tossed in the air turned into a puff of snow
endeavor has been added to a cup of water
tossed in the air turned into a puff of snow
[...]
- Large Craft Warnings, collaboration with Miriam Solan (pg. 45)

The poem "To Admiral Scott about Space", in its form rather than its content, elicits comparison to Anne Carson's red doc> . Unlike the other comparisons I have made, Scarlet Tanager was published first...

BRIGHT CURRENTS
LEAP the air. They come
together surprisingly
gently and shift direction
to a swooping curve that
heads off southward.
Winged man and musk ox
are parts of each other
although not parts of a 
whole. G doesn't have
time to wonder as he
works his wings against
the thickening air why Io
is no longer falling
toward him but planning
steadily and horizontally
above his back. . . .
 - Anne Carson (red doc>, pg. 139)

Fractious glaciers, there is
In it no mention of the rest
Some of the stuff seemed his
Oh God, the house was a mess
 - To Admiral Scott About Space (pg. 46)

There are a number of poems that, while their content is seemingly simple their form and the form they take in the context of the collection, are reminiscent of Ted Berrigan, specifically The Sonnet...

I wake up back aching from soft bed Pat
gone to work Ron to class (I
never heard a sound) it's my birthday. I put on
birthday pants birthday shirt go to ADAM's buy a
pepsi for breakfast come home drink it take a pill
I'm high. I do three Greek lessons
to make up for cutting class. I read birthday book
(from Joe) on Juan Gris real name Jose Vittoriano
Gonzales stop in the middle read all
my poems gloat a little over new ballad quickly skip old
sonnets imitations of Shakespeare. Back to books. I read
poems by Auden Spenser Pound Stevens and Frank O'Hara.
I hate books.
I wonder if Jan or Helen or Babe
ever thinks about me. I wonder if Dave Bearden still
dislikes me. I wonder if people talk about me
secretly. I wonder if I'm too old. I wonder if I'm fooling
myself about pills. I wonder what's in the icebox. I wonder
if Ron or Pat bought any toilet paper this morning
- Ted Berrigan, Sonnet LXXVI


Wake up from dream on
July 9 1965, dream was erotic
(can't remember what was in it),
I think the woman was attempting
to sit on her chair while
lifting the man's wallet
but then on the boat ride my hand
got caught in the elevator door
by the firecracker tossed in
by a child who was a woman as missing
as the coffee money, anyway I
lost balance and, falling, woke up
jerking off through the chair,
another chair, was still falling
on my foot, sorry.
- Incidents Report Sonnet, for Grace (pg. 73)

My favourite part of Scarlet Tanager was the sequence of "Epigrams", part of which incorporated descriptions of objects from the perspective of the objects...

i am a hump-backed whale
i am smarter than you are
& always will be


i am an uncaught house mouse
i hid your chocolate-covered espresso beans
in a drawer & then surprise!
they spill onto all your clothing
i also destroy your black velveteen overalls
- from Epigrams (pg. 2 - 3)


i am the hidden owl
in the upper right hand corner
of the american dollar bill i don't have


i am a cockroach in a roach motel
soon i'll be convicted for murder
my name is louis anemone
- from Epigrams (pg. 14)


i am beef wellington
you could have had me at the swiss
restaurant on new year's eve
with consomme celestine, but you didn't


i am the small coke you got at loew's
i was too sweet and
it goes without saying much too expensive
the movie was kundun.
- from Epigrams (pg. 18)


I'm the bottle of beer you emptied
You drank to learn about love
Nobody told me how crazy you'd get
When you threw me to smash the jealous well
When she walked in
- from Laundry & School Epigrams (pg. 22)


I am loud, I am the radio
that plays "Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head."
The rain and the rainbow & the one sleeping
with the frog are on me and the one sleeping with
the other girls sharing yellow are on me.
I was stolen from a playground in Massachusetts
and I have lasted a long time. I have notes on me.
- from Toy Epigrams (pg. 23)

Difficult to read a poem like "To a Politician" and not think of the politicians from the era in which the poem was written (early 2000s). Read this poem and tell me you don't think of George W. Bush and Stephen Harper...

Your penis is homeless
You are covered with as many warts as the lies you've told
You pat maggots on their backs
Your syphilitic mouth sucks the slugs from the irradiated cocks of your cohorts
This gives a bad name to syphilis, if I mention it in relation to you
Your asshole farts from overeating of civilian casualties
The toxic fingernails of your leprous hands
Flip through the reports of your medievally botulistic bubonic policies
Your brain is full of lice, tickling it with greed for pesticide-ish powder
Cockroaches fill your pancreas with their eggs
But this is an insult to cockroaches
Your lungs fill with the blood of the dead
Poisonous snakes of freedom crawl into your every orifice, bu to no avail
Spiders come out of your nose
Your heart is being pinched by Lyme-diseased tics, stung by killer bees, bitten bu the rattlesnake of prevarication
First thing every morning your gangrenous arms embrace the rabid turds of your generals
Your penis is the size of the junkie's needle
Your nostrils resemble the assholes of cops
It seems to us you convert farts into speeches
Your disease-ridden mouth is full of the incurable sores of your lies
Your petrified eyes eat the bulimic vomit of your violent words
All words, all humans, insulted, disgusted, bu your depraved existence.
- To a Politician (pg. 41)

[Carrie Cantalupo-Sharp · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like her epigrams ALOT! But could not relate or totally understand most else. I do appreciate her courage and inventiveness!

[Jesse D · Rating 2 out of 5]

The poems in this book were very interesting, and while I often found individual lines in the poems that I liked a lot, they never quite felt like they all came together. Part of that has to do with the fact that many of the poems in this collection seemed to be written in very different styles - I think that if I had more time to get acquainted with one of them before they switched I would have ended up getting more from the collection. I didn't realized this until after reading the book, but it seems to be made up of previously uncollected poems written over slightly more than a decade - it's like the poetry equivalent of a B-Sides and Rarities album, and like those, it's probably for fans only. I plan to read one of Mayer's other books soon, since I found a lot in this collection that was interesting, but I wouldn't recommend starting here for anyone else who's never read her before.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bernadette Mayer writes funny, serious, innovative poems. It's inspiring. I can't say enough - I would love to study with her.