Dear Sandy, Hello: Letters from Ted to Sandy Berrigan - Softcover

Berrigan, Ted

Softcover

ISBN 10: 156689249X ISBN 13: 9781566892490

Publisher: Coffee House Press, 2010

Synopsis

Ted and Sandy Berrigan’s honeymoon ended when her father, a well-connected doctor, forced Sandy into a mental hospital, had Ted run out of town by the sheriff, and hired private detectives to investigate his friends. These intimate, irresistible letters, written over the course of their three-month separation, read like a passionate, epistolary novel—full of longing, intrigue, and gossip. They also offer serious advice for developing readers and writers, bring the thriving cultural scene in mid-twentieth-century New York to life, and serve as a day-by-day chronicle of Ted Berrigan’s developing voice.

In addition to the letters, this collection contains never-before-published reproductions from A Book of Poetry for Sandy,featuring Berrigan’s cutouts, drawings, photographs of fellow poets and artists, and excerpts from poems that eventually became The Sonnets.

About this title

About the Author

Ted Berrigan (1934-1983), a central figure in the second generation of New York School poets, was the author of more than twenty books including The Sonnets, So Going Around Cities, and A Certain Slant of Sunlight. The editor and publisher of C Magazine, he also wrote art criticism and became an influential mentor to an entire generation of writers.

Reviews

Starred Review. In 1962, poet Ted Berrigan (The Sonnets) was an unknown New York writer. While visiting New Orleans, he eloped with 19-year-old Sandy Alper. Suspecting Ted of drug use, Sandy's parents became frightened and irrational and had her involuntarily committed to a mental ward, although after a few months, Sandy managed to flee with Ted. By 1969 the couple was divorced. This volume vividly preserves their young love through Ted's letters to Sandy while she was institutionalized--packed with rage, frustration, and thoughts about writing--and Sandy's responses, reporting on her reading and the little dramas of the mental ward. Seventeen years after Ted's death, this volume validate my presence in Ted's life, Sandy explains somewhat wistfully. According to Padgett, Ted's letters reveal much of the emotional turbulence that helped infuse The Sonnets with such energy and drive. It's time for less warm tears and more cold fury, writes Ted, transporting the reader to a time when a passionate and impulsive young woman could be committed for behavior contrary to social norms. Even those unfamiliar with Ted's poetry will be fascinated by the drama inherent in this collection. 20 b&w illus.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 156689249X
• ISBN 13: 9781566892490
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368