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Twilight of Two Poets
New York in the early '80s is the setting of Bettina Drew's memoir of her brief acquaintances with poets Ted Berrigan and Elizabeth Smart. In this TMR online exclusive, Drew recalls her graduate-school workshop with the self-destructive Ted Berrigan, whose 1963 collection The Sonnets remains a classic of experimental poetry.
A year or so after Berrigan's death, a fan letter Drew wrote brought about a meeting with the Canadian poet and novelist Elizabeth Smart, known best for her 1945 book-length prose poem By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, about Smart's passionate but hopeless adulterous affair with British poet George Barker.
In recognition of National Poetry Month, we bring you Drew's firsthand remembrance of two poets who, in different ways, were both "anti-materialistic and unconventional and believed in love and art."
To read this essay, please follow the link below.
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Our Latest Issue: Crash
33.2 Summer 2010
Featuring work by M.C. Armstrong, John W. Evans, Benjamin S. Grossberg, Becky Adnot Haynes, Nathan Hogan, Jonathan Johnson, Devin Murphy, Wade Ostrowski, and Sharon Solwitz... and an interview with Natasha Trethewey.
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