51. Late Returns A Memoir of Ted Berrigan- Tom Clark
I bought the UC Press Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan a couple years ago. I only got around to starting it late last year (and am still only on page 200 or so, I keep it under my nightstand, savoring it). Berrigan was almost immediately enshrined as a major god-head in my personal pantheon. I can't believe I waited this long to read Berrigan. Michael Koshkin (Hot Whiskey Press) used to have a huge thing for Berrigan, Jared Hayes and the rest of the Naropa Goons definitely had a huge thing for Berrigan. But unfortunately I kind of had an SF stick up my ass back then. I was reading a lot of Michael Palmer at the time. It's not that I had an aversion to NY School and 2nd Gen NYS writing, it's just that I was totally consumed with SF/ Bay Area poetry and poetics, frankly I thought anything NOT coming from the Bay Area wasn't worth my time, I was fucking retarded back then and have been reforming myself over the last few years. Late Returns is a good little, hard to find biography by Tom Clark (published in '85 by Tombouctou Books). I read it in an evening. Some interesting anecdotal stuff, some cool photos and correspondences. Anxiously waiting for the news that someone has been secretly working on a Berrigan biography for the last few years on the scale of Poet Be Like God. Cheers to fantasizing.
52. Zazil #1
Magazine I picked up from an SPD Open House 5 or 6 years ago. Did James Meetze edit this bad boy? Or just have poems in this issue? I want to say this was a Southern California based mag. I don't remember anything specific about this magazine besides reading it in the bathroom. Oh wait, I remember that my copy was misprinted, the back cover was printed as the front cover rendering a Japanese-style spine. I think Mark Wallace had some poems in this issue.
53. Jim Goad's Gigantic Book Of Sex- Jim Goad
The best kind of bathroom reading. A coffee table book of Goad's best sex writing. First started reading him on Street Carnage. Then found his website. Then bought The Redneck Manifesto (and read it while visiting a friend in Brooklyn!), then bought the Gigantic Book Of Sex (the kind of book where your legs fall asleep while reading for lack of position change), then bought Shit Magnet (which I started then put down, saving for a rainy day). If they sold Jim Goad t-shirts I would buy one. Now he's writing for Taki's and I'm checking in daily.
54. Ted A Personal Memoir Of Ted Berrigan- Ron Padgett
This is the more free form of the two Berrigan bios. Padgett spends a lot of time talking about Berrigan's time in Tulsa. His friends, his affairs, his habits and eventual move to NYC, and ultimately his death. Again, this is basically a one sitting read; a small, fun, anecdotal book written by one of Berrigan oldest poetry friends. I think this book is officially out of print.
55. Ted Berrigan- Bill Berkson and George Schneeman
This artist's book was put out by Kyle Schlesinger of Cuniform Press last year. It's a visual collaboration between Bill Berkson and George Schneeman. I snagged a damaged copy from SPD. Limited to 500 copies. I have this perched against a wall in my bedroom, right next to a giant William Everson chapbook. From the publisher "Ted Berrigan is a classic collaboration between Bill Berkson and George Schneeman, and an homage to the poet and painter's mutual friend produced as a unique book in real-time at George's studio on St. Mark's Place on March 5, 2006. Continuing in the tradition of New York School collaboration, Schneeman and Berkson's Ted Berrigan is a high-quality reproduction comprised of eight spreads where image and text fuse, bleed off the page and cross the gutter. Includes an afterword by Berkson and a note from the publisher."
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