Nice To See You: Homage to Ted Berrigan

by Ted Berrigan, Anne Waldman (Editor)

Berrigan's longtime friend Anne Waldman put together this moving tribute to the important poet. It includes stories, essays, poems, paintings, and photographs by a group of gifted writers and artists.

Genres: Poetry

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Berrigan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 15, 1934. After high school, he spent a year at Providence College before joining the U.S. Army. After three years in the Army, he finished his college studies at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma, where he received a BA in English in 1959 and fell just short of the requirements for a M.A. in 1962. Berrigan was married to Sandy Berrigan, also a poet, and they had two children, David Berrigan and Kate Berrigan. He and his second wife, the poet Alice Notley, were active in the poetry scene in Chicago for several years, then moved to New York City, where he edited various magazines and books.

A prominent figure in the second generation of the New York School of Poets, Berrigan was peer to Jim Carroll, Anselm Hollo, Alice Notley, Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman, Bernadette Mayer, and Lewis Warsh. He collaborated with Padgett and Joe Brainard on Bean Spasms, a work significant in its rejection of traditional concepts of ownership. Though Berrigan, Padgett, and Brainard all wrote individual poems for the book, and collaborated on many others, no authors were listed for individual poems.

The poet Frank O'Hara called Berrigan's most significant publication, The Sonnets, "a fact of modern poetry." A telling reflection on the era that produced it, The Sonnets beautifully weaves together traditional elements of the Shakespearean sonnet form with the disjunctive structure and cadence of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Berrigan's own literary innovations and personal experiences.

Berrigan died on July 4, 1983 at the age of 49. The cause of death was cirrhosis of the liver brought on by hepatitis.

Reviews

[Ed Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

After Ted passed away I read this memoir, letter, poem book dedicated to
a kind & fine gentleman Ted Berrigan. The editors left out many of
my contempories Eleanor Nauen,Simon Pettet, Eileen Myles, Joel Lewis who
knew Ted in 1979-83 before he died. I saw him 3 nights
before he died and he was in the bathroom reading poems,talking
to Alice Notley his wife, it was a hot summer in NYC that year 1983.

[Josh Simpson · Rating 5 out of 5]

the Captain America of US poetry

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

SKKS