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.