Since When

by Bill Berkson

Overview

Praise for Bill Berkson:
"Wonderful. . . . Fifty years of slow-dawning epiphany." —San Francisco Bay Guardian
"I'd like to thank Bill Berkson for: epitomizing objectivity & subjectivity; amusedly living in the cerulean blue, alizarin crimson mixed with titanium white, & burnt sienna world we've got; & writing for us." —Bernadette Mayer
"A serene master of syntactical sleight and transformer of the mundane into the marvelous." —Publishers Weekly
Bill Berkson was a poet, art critic, and joyful participant in the best of postwar and bohemian American culture. Since When gathers the ephemera of a life well-lived, a collage of boldface names, parties, exhibitions, and literary history from a man who could write "of [Truman Capote's Black and White] ball, which I attended as my mother's escort, I have little recollection" and reminisce about imagining himself as a character from Tolstoy while tripping on acid at Woodstock. Gentle, witty, and eternally generous, this is Berkson, and a particular moment in American history, at its best.
Bill Berkson (New York, 1939) was a poet, critic, teacher, and curator who became active in the art and literary worlds in his early twenties. He collaborated with many artists and writers, including Alex Katz, Philip Guston, and Frank O'Hara, and his criticism appeared in ArtNews, Art in America, and elsewhere. Formerly a professor of liberal arts at the San Francisco Art Institute, he was born in New York in 1939. He died in June 2016.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781566895293
Publisher:	Coffee House Press
Publication date:	11/06/2018
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Bill Berkson (New York, 1939) was a poet, critic, teacher, and curator who became active in the art and literary worlds in his early twenties. He collaborated with many artists and writers, including Alex Katz, Philip Guston, and Frank O’Hara, and his criticism appeared in ArtNews, Art in America, and elsewhere. Formerly a professor of liberal arts at the San Francisco Art Institute, he was born in New York in 1939. He died in June 2016.

Table of Contents

Introduction Holland Cotter ix

Acknowledgments Constance Lewallen xi

Since When 3

Personal Portraits 47

Misunderstandings for and about Kenneth Koch 49

What Frank O'Hara Was Like 51

Larry Rivers 58

Willem de Kooning 61

Edwin Denby 64

Elaine de Kooning 68

Allen Ginsberg 69

Burroughs at First and Later 71

August 14, 1992: John Cage 73

Twenty-Three Things about W. H. Auden 74

Arnold Weinstein 78

Doc Humes 80

Morris Golde 82

Morton Feldman 84

Hello, Philip 88

Schuyler Entries 91

Tiger, Tiger: A Few Days with Joan Mitchell 96

"Everyday Expressionism": Michael Goldberg and Painting in the Fifties 98

Jane Freilicher (Letter to Lizzie Hazan) 102

John Bernard Myers 103

John Wieners 105

Philip Whalen 107

MY Life (and Bob's) with Robert Creeley 109

Amiri Baraka 112

Ted Berrigan 114

A Note on Ted Berrigan 116

Joe Brainard 118

Some Jim 123

Late in the Day, First Visit to Rudy and Yvonne's 126

George Schneeman 129

A Note on Bill 131

Scenes and Routines 137

Dearest Bill 139

Family Names 141

Dagmar and Robin 142

Autograph Hunters 143

M. M. 146

Finding the Music 147

From a Childhood #101 149

Fashion 150

Belle Terre 151

"How about Some Okra on Sands Street?": An Impromptu Special to Larry Fagin about Jack Kerouac 154

Dear Molly Proust 158

Garbo Talks 162

History at Night 163

A New York Beginner 164

"Europe" and So On 168

Variations on a Theme (Warfare) 170

Engagements 1961 172

Avenue de la Bourdonnais 175

Spoleto 1965 176

Andy Warhol 181

Teaching in the Sixties 182

At Yale, with Jean Genet 184

Poets in the Schools 186

Frank Sinatra 188

My Generation 189

The Phenomenology of Everyday Life 191

Bolinas 192

Three Visions of Dame Kind 194

Las Vegas 195

With Landis Everson 196

Ageism 197

Love Without Fear 198

Identity: Kevin Ramsay Interviews Bill Berkson 201

Polyphony: All in One 203

Some Books 205

Memory Snippets 209

Ten Books That Changed the World 215

Changes (After Alex Katz) 216

100 Women 223

Journal Snippets: New York 1961-70 235

Q&A 249

Ted Greenwald Interviews Bill Berkson 251

Twenty Questions with Bill Berkson 253

Sophie Calle/Grégoire Bouillier Questionnaire 255

Eden 257

Jane Nakagawa Interviews Bill Berkson 259

Editorial Reviews

Since When is a sentimental prayer to the great artists Berkson knew, not unlike a bittersweet and light-hearted speech delivered at a memorial service.” —Commonplace Review

“Berkson was the ultimate fly on the wall, and through his evocative writing the reader gets to be the same.” —Ploughshares

“Since When is a pleasingly scattered series of reminisces, interviews, lists and character sketches by Berkson, who hung out in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s with scads of poets, artists and other creative types—so many that he can credibly list ‘that interesting subset of poets who were born in 1934.’” —Star Tribune

“Since When offers a significant historical addition to the dreamlike worlds in Berkson’s poetry.” —Poetry Foundation

“[Since When] serves as a vivid testament to the enduring indispensability of relationships between artists.” —Open Space

The resulting mosaic gives a vivid account of Berkson’s colorful life in the intertwined literary and artistic milieus of New York and San Francisco during the postwar decades.” —Art in America

“[Since When is] sentimental and funny, and makes you believe in a shared social project. Berkson was dedicated to this, and the example of his poetry and practice astonishes in this terrific memoir.” —Entropy Magazine

“Imagine an ideal friend, someone of good character, honorable, congenial, smart, well-read, judicious, articulate, self-aware, open-minded, and socially graceful, a gifted writer at the center of New York’s and the Bay Area’s artistic communities for sixty years. That ideal friend is Bill Berkson, and in this marvelous book he tells the true and fascinating story of his life and times.” —Ron Padgett

“Since When captures the throbbing zeitgeist of a NYC/California experimental poetry/art rhizome and brims with dazzling encounters and glamorous portraiture of some of the best, most talented minds, including the author’s own parents and their coterie. Enthralling conversation, quotation, and astute commentary: Judy Garland! Ezra Pound! Greta Garbo! Frank O’Hara! Joan Mitchell! Amiri Baraka! Poet and art critic Bill Berkson spanned high and low: uptown/downtown zones of radical art mind. The Bohemian, dandyish, psychedelic, and the troubling hegemonic follies of a USA growing old because it ‘entered the twentieth century first’ (G. Stein) all romp in here. Bill had a shining boyish inquisitiveness, phenomenal memory, and a panoramic intelligence. Read this and eat your heart out for the belletristic, wild, and intimate days of the New York School. Entertaining—you feel you are in a very glamorous movie—but never shallow, this is serious history, required reading.” —Anne Waldman

“It’s tough to write a blurb about one of the most effortlessly cool and genuinely wise people you’ve ever met, especially when they already said it best with their high school yearbook quote: ‘Plato or comic books, I’m versatile.’ That was Bill, all the way. As his student, the main theme was, ‘Be kind, be clear, and a little humor goes a long way,’ a message that impacted our class deeply and continues to do so to this very day. This memoir is a celebration of his life and friends as told by Bill Himself, in that gentle and knowing voice, tales of getting karate chopped at by Norman Mailer, drinking with Joan Mitchell, long nights with Frank O’Hara, Elaine de Kooning, and Amiri Baraka, to name a few. Essential reading for any and all!” —Devendra Banhart

“Both a valuable cultural history and a wonderfully appealing mosaic of an autobiography.” —On the Seawall

“Bill was a still point in a turning world. He made grace and kindness, careful intelligence and everyday happiness, seem properties of a social commons—where you found yourself, when around him, and missed, when not. This beautiful book immortalizes that spell.” —Peter Schjeldahl

From the Publisher