meeting ted berrigan

in march of 1968 i traveled from berkeley, california, to new york city on my way to europe, seeking some relief from a nagging depression that had followed the disastrous failure of the most important romantic attachment i had experienced up until that time. i stayed at an upper westside apartment with the son of my berkeley landlady. the most memorable events of that stay in new york were chancing upon the organizational meeting of the international yippie party in grand central station, where heads were getting busted outside while you could slip in peacefully on the subway; and i ran into a fellow berkeley graduate student from spain as i exited the train. inside it was a big party that eventually poured out into the streets and proceded to the sheep meadow in central park.

about the same time i somehow found the residential address of the poet ted berrigan, peraps in the periodical where i first encountered his work, "mother", co-edited by a poet from texas. i was writing experimentally myself at the time and had been significantly influenced and liberated by a berrigan poem entitled "tambourine world". i don't know how i had the nerve to do this, but i brashly called at the berrigan apartment in the east village about 10 in the morning. his wife informed me that ted was sleeping, after having worked all night. she told me i could see him at the poetry reading at saint mark's church poetry project in the village that night. i did, and i spoke to him. he said he had wondered who had called on him that morning. i told him of my admiration for "tambourine world" and how it had inspired a number of poems i had recently written. he shared that it had been very liberating for him as well. that was my only night at the saint mark's project. now i am reading in an anthology from the history of that institution and once again am very impressed. although i don't necessarily still write or think in the same vein as i did in the sixties, it was a very exciting time to be alive and to be involved. those good times continued for almost six months in europe and for years afterwards in texas and california.