Bernadette Mayer (1945-2022)

Bernadette Mayer. Drawing, 1995. Charcoal on paper. Detail - orig. 23" X 29"

I had a dream about Bernadette two years before I ever met her. She and some American Indian women were in the old Theater Genesis room upstairs of the parish hall at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery. (The room where they held writing workshops). They were grinding dried corn on blue stone. I witnessed it hovering over their shoulders as pure consciousness. It was 11th St. just past 2nd Ave. I had only read one book of hers at the time and that was The Golden Book of Words. I'd also been reading the magazine she was co-editing at the time, that was United Artists. And I'd also gotten into this funny ritual of walking down to St. Mark's Bookshop between classes at SVA and reading from her book Memory in that poetry alcove they used to have.  When I volunteered to assist with the mailing of The Poetry Project Newsletter in November 1981 I recognized the room as the room from my dream. It was exactly so. I'd get very familiar with that room taking workshops with Maureen Owen and John Godfrey throughout the early eighties.

I'm posting this for last night I dreamed of Bernadette and she was very much on my mind during my daybreak walk - in a deer that leapt in front of me and the already changing leaves here in New England. In other words, Bernadette is coming through today. In last night's dream we sat in an alcove at The Vermont Country Store in Weston Vermont that was also Gotham Book Mart and St. Mark's Bookshop. She was chiding me, young, tough, full of herself in a bright red shirt - reminding me of how good I've got it (she was right, I'm truly blessed at this point). But she also, with a nod and a wink, acknowledged that it wasn't always like that, that I'd paid some dues. Phil was with her being perfectly Phil - animated, laughing.

I did this drawing in 1995 as Bernadette was being rehabilitated from her brain aneurysm of October 1994. She just sort of came through in the process of the drawing, revealing herself. Perhaps this was a work of sympathetic magic. I loved Bernadette very much. We were old soldiers. One night, On East 4th St. she said to me "What have we been trying to do for the last 350 years?" Part statement, part Question - I didn't doubt it at all then, nor do I now. She remains the single most important, significant influence on my work as an artist to this day. She is one of Earth's greatest poets and conceptualists. She ranks alongside Kerouac, Hawthorne and Rimbaud. Every word deserves to be read.

  

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