Bill Berkson does not have the cart...

Bill Berkson does not have the cartoonish humor of Ron Padgett, or the deadpan directness of the late Joe Brainard. Because of this lack of a signature title Berkson is often overlooked--even according to devotees of the second-generation just discovered York School with which he is associated. even now his latest collection, Serenade: poesy and Prose 1975-89, offers many pleasures-- not least of which is its easy emotion between quotidian detail and a more abstract, thicker diction. Take, for example, "Drill" (present in its entirety):
Fixed breakfast
Patch onward an old shoe