Get the Money! Collected Prose (1961–1983)

Poet Ted Berrigan (The Sonnets) complemented his poetry with an uneven prose output, as seen in this “highly idiosyncratic body of work,” as described in the introduction by his son Anselm. Journal entries provide glimpses of the 1960s poetry scene: “Ginsberg was poised and assured, like a Jazz musician who knows he’s good,” Berrigan observed at a Downtown Manhattan reading. A section of “Longer Works of the More Academic Type,” meanwhile, features a list of the poet’s “10 Favorite Books of 1980” and a fabricated “interview” with musician John Cage made up of strung-together quotes from various other interviews. The criticism’s a little shaky: a review of F.T. Price’s poetry illuminates Berrigan’s personality far more than Price’s writing when he concludes “I can’t find much to say about this book.” And a review of William S. Burroughs’s Nova Express mainly reads like nonsense: “You have to be free to remember he was under sentence of death in Maximum Security Birth Death Universe.” Readers unfamiliar with the New York poetry scene might find themselves a little lost, but for those who know the terrain, this is worth digging into. [em](Sept.) [/em]