In the Early Morning Rain

by Ted Berrigan

VERY GOOD FIRST EDITION hardcover, clean text, solid binding, NO remainders NOT ex-library slight shelfwear / storage-wear; cover shows corner bumps, edgewear; no dust jacket as issued; WE SHIP FAST. Carefully packed and quickly sent. 201512265 Berrigan considered himself a “late Beat,” and, like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, he traced his lineage as a writer to the American Expressionist tradition. The first writer to excite him was Thomas Wolfe, who had also been important to Kerouac. Berrigan had very high regard as well for Kerouac, whom he interviewed for the Paris Review, and for another writer at the core of the Expressionist tradition, William Saroyan. American Expressionism, which grounds literary authority in the personality of the writer rather than, say, a political creed or traditional aesthetics, can be traced to the work of mid-nineteenth-century writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman. Among its most influential twentieth-century practitioners was Gertrude Stein. Kerouac stated his own Expressionist position in “Essentials of Spontaneous Prose,” where he said that a writer should pursue “not ‘selectivity’ of expression but following free deviation (association) of mind into limitless blow-on-subject seas of thought, swimming in a sea of English with no discipline other than rhythms of exhalation and expostulated statement.” I love reading the individual books of Ted Berrigan, Philip Whalen etc. Lucky to have the poetry library on the Southbank. In the Early Morning Rain has some nice fresh moments. I liked "Waterloo Sunset" (collaboration with Ron Padgett) and "Poem for Philip Whalen" a lot. Also a nice wee prose narrative poem called "Life Among the Woods." We recommend selecting Priority Mail wherever available. (No shipping to Mexico, Brazil or Italy.)

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Berrigan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 15, 1934. After high school, he spent a year at Providence College before joining the U.S. Army. After three years in the Army, he finished his college studies at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma, where he received a BA in English in 1959 and fell just short of the requirements for a M.A. in 1962. Berrigan was married to Sandy Berrigan, also a poet, and they had two children, David Berrigan and Kate Berrigan. He and his second wife, the poet Alice Notley, were active in the poetry scene in Chicago for several years, then moved to New York City, where he edited various magazines and books.

A prominent figure in the second generation of the New York School of Poets, Berrigan was peer to Jim Carroll, Anselm Hollo, Alice Notley, Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman, Bernadette Mayer, and Lewis Warsh. He collaborated with Padgett and Joe Brainard on Bean Spasms, a work significant in its rejection of traditional concepts of ownership. Though Berrigan, Padgett, and Brainard all wrote individual poems for the book, and collaborated on many others, no authors were listed for individual poems.

The poet Frank O'Hara called Berrigan's most significant publication, The Sonnets, "a fact of modern poetry." A telling reflection on the era that produced it, The Sonnets beautifully weaves together traditional elements of the Shakespearean sonnet form with the disjunctive structure and cadence of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Berrigan's own literary innovations and personal experiences.

Berrigan died on July 4, 1983 at the age of 49. The cause of death was cirrhosis of the liver brought on by hepatitis.

Reviews

[Marcus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love reading the individual books of Ted Berrigan, Philip Whalen etc. Lucky to have the poetry library on the Southbank. In the Early Morning Rain has some nice fresh moments. I liked "Waterloo Sunset" (collaboration with Ron Padgett) and "Poem for Philip Whalen" a lot. Also a nice wee prose narrative poem called "Life Among the Woods." I prefer Berrigan's Train Ride to In the Early Morning Rain. But god . . . can you go wrong with Berrigan????