Back in Boston Again by Various (Berrigan, Ted; Clark, Tom; Padgett, Ron) - 1972

New York, NY: Telegraph Books, 1972. First Edition. Softcover. Fine. "I enjoyed the time recollected in these pages by Ted Berrigan, Tom Clark, and Ron Padgett, all of whom are fine people as well as fine writers. Ted Berrigan is a man who reads while listening to the radio--and he talks simultaneously, usually commenting on the song and the book. Tom Clark is very smart in an unusual way, I think. Most smart people in school turn out to be not so smart later on. Tom is one who seems not to have ended his life in school. Ron Padgett is from Tulsa, Oklahoma, a town I visited briefly about a year ago. It has a very modern library where I imagine Ron sat and quietly read while he was in high school. It has been a few years now since this book was written. We are all different people now, and very much the same, too." (Aram Saroyan, from Introduction). This classic one-off New York School work is another collaborative collection composed and released in the cooly offhanded, witty, comic and intelligent style native to many "New York" poets. The other trademark of the "New York Poets" circle is the warmth and playfulness with which they regard each other in publication, the flipside of the coin to Beat-like pedestal-mythologizing. Saroyan was present on the trip, as well. The book is a fun biographical ramble with natively poetic elements to its narrative. Book in fine condition major age-toning, foxing, and soiling to front cover and slight shelf-wear throughout; slight, short horizontal creases, indentations nearest spine-edge of front cover; yet besides this, a copy in this condition is much cleaner than copies we are seeing offered contemporaneously by other sellers.