Reading Response 1-22-2015

What I found interesting about our readings this week was the Ted Berrigan Sonnets. I found his use of crude language and repetitious phrases to be unusual. He uses phrases like "belly to hot belly we have laid", "baffling combustions are everywhere", and "massive as Anne's thighs" multiple times. He also was seemingly very comfortable using crude language to deliver his point. Like by claiming that "fucking is so very lovely" when comparing poetry to sex. 

Berrigan talks about how "everyone's suddenly pregnant and no one is glad" and "teeth that you've never dreamed could bite". I think this is in reference to how a poem can reveal things about yourself that you did not know before. I believe he is referencing the power poetry has to teach us. Poetry has the power to change our opinions and our emotions. Depending on the tone of it, it could evoke any emotion the poet desires.

I also found the way Berrigan formatted his poems interesting. For example, in sonnet XV, the first line, logically, should be followed by the last, the second, the second to last. Yet that is not how he did it. He arranged it as a collage, putting the line "and the sonnet is not dead" in the middle.