On the Level Everyday: Selected Talks on Poetry and the Art of Living

Ted Berrigan was not only one of his generation's most respected poets; he was among its most influential teachers. In many ways, the currents followed by contemporary poetry were established by him in classes and poetry workshops he taught at the University of Michigan, Yale, the City College of New York, Stevens Institute of Technology, the University of Essex in England, the St. Mark's Poetry Project, and elsewhere. He was a particularly strong influence on his students at the Jack Kerouac School of the Naropa Institute.Berrigan lived with his family in a small apartment in Manhattan's East Village. Ted was ceaselessly interested in what you might call technique, his wife Alice Notley wrote, and probably talked about it more than any poet or academician in America. He was so famous for his opinions on the subject that the apartment was often crowded with writers from around the world who came to hear what he had to say.Ted famously believed that being a poet was a 24-hour-a day job, wrote Notley. Poetry was at the core of everything a poet did, Berrigan believed, and he demanded that his students shape their lives accordingly.