This landmark collection brings Ted Berrigan's published and unpublished poetry together in a single authoritative volume for the first time. Edited by the poet Alice Notley, Berrigan's second wife, and their two sons, The Collected Poems demonstrates the remarkable range, power, and importance of Berrigan's work.

"Comfortably intimate--classically adroit in its formal wit and invention--altogether unique yet in no way excluding, this meticulously edited edition of a master poet's collected works gives us the defining bridge from the "New American Poetry" of the '50s to that poetry now contemporary on both coasts and in all conditions. No one ever recognized the people with whom he lived more particularly than did Ted Berrigan, and no one ever brought them home to a reader with such unaggressive and persistent power. This is a great, great book for all seasons of the mind and heart."--Robert Creeley"Ted Berrigan was a leader of the New York School; his crazy energy embodied that movement and the city itself. It is wonderful to have his Collected Poems in print."--John Ashbery"A comprehensive and carefully chronicled volume that puts Ted Berrigan in historical context as one of the most influential poets of his generation. His poems: deft, light, definitely humorous, irreverent, poignant, 'marvelous and tough.' The truth doing its work, 'the great man doing the ordinary thing, ' with a quick ear and a quick tongue, revealing the personal in the universal. He gives you his full attention--'about to be born again thinking of you.' "--Joanne Kyger"In a life devoted to experimental art, Ted Berrigan shaped his poetry and the space he occupied with a bold artistry based on his playful but powerfully skeptical view of the world. He wondered what might actually be captured within the pages of a book, but The Collected Poems allows us to again enjoy Ted Berrigan's delightfully demanding presence."--Lorenzo Thomas

Ted Berrigan was an important avant garde poet and literary figure who helped define the Lower East Side art community in the 1960s--the Frank O'Hara of the second generation. Most of his poetry is no longer in print.