Hall of Mirrors

1. This poem is addressed to an old friend or former love — we don’t know the exact nature of their relationship, but we do sense the intimacy between them. What does the poem tell you about the speaker’s feelings for the person to whom he is speaking? (Presumably Kristen Lems, as Berrigan dedicated the poem to her.)
2. Where is the speaker now? Where does he live? What details about the speaker’s life and interests does the poem tell you
3. The poet says “Knew of it first / in New York City. Couldn’t find it / in Ann Arbor, though / I like it here” — though we can’t know for sure what “it” is, what do you imagine it to be?
4. What do you think the speaker feels is “missing”? What is being left up in the air?
5. If you were going to recite the poem, where would you pause? How would you emphasize the musical interplay between the words like “rhymes”  “mine”  and “time”? What tone would you use for this poem?
6. Write a poem to someone who you used to feel very close to but who you no longer see. What would it be like to see them now? Even if things ended badly, imagine extending compassion toward this person and feeling connected without feeling attached. You can also experiment with ending the poem with a rhyming or slant-rhyming couplet. (A slant rhyme is when two words share the same vowel sound, but end with a different consonant sound; you can hear the resonance between the words “mine” and “time” even though they don’t click the same way “mine” and, say, “line” do.)

Useful Links

See footage from Ron Mann’s excellent documentary Poetry in Motion of the poet Ted Berrigan reading this poem in the “infinity room” at the storied Poetry Project at St Marks Church on the Bowery in NYC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ5s9C42YcM