Memoir: 1960-1963

by Tony Towle

Cultural Writing. Memoir. Kenneth Koch writes, "Tony Towle's is one of the clear, authentic voices of American poetry." Towle's memoirs take the form of fast-paced prose recollections of odd events and sometimes-odder characters that shaped and structured his first days as a poet during the formative years of the New York School 'before anyone was famous.' Towle traces his initiation into poetry and the downtown art world, relating his thrills, frustrations and peculiarly memorable interactions with a number of live-wire figures key to his own development, including Frank O'Hara, Frank Lima, Ted Berrigan, and many others.

Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Up until that spring, I had always written the first drafts of my poems by hand (although I liked to see them neatly typed eventually). Partly this was due to the fact that my first thoughts were composed in coffee houses or parks - on the fly, as it were. Now that I had a more settled existence I very quickly got used to composing directly on the typewriter, scouring my imagination in the privacy of my own room rather than in public. It had very quickly come to pass that I couldn't "see" what I was working on very well unless it was typed. There was a purist idea around at this time that the handwritten line was "more authentic" than the impersonal, typed one. My rejoinder was that, from the 16 century on, if one's poetry was any good it was going to end up on the printed page anyway, so the typewriter was a provisional typesetter - you could see how your work was going to look.”