Object Poems

Bill Berkson
San Francisco, California

Box for David Abel

“Box for David Abel” is just that.

Notes and ephemera in card box with acetate lid. 2010. Unique.

NFS    

About the Artist

Bill Berkson is a poet, critic, teacher, and sometime curator. He is the author of many books and pamphlets of poetry, including Serenade; Fugue State; a volume of his 1960s collaborations with Frank O’Hara entitled Hymns of St. Bridget & Other Writings; the deluxe portfolio Gloria with etchings by Alex Katz; and more recently, Our Friends Will Pass Among You Silently; Portrait and Dream: New & Selected Poems; Goods and Services; and Lady Air. Four recent word-and-image collaborations are BILL with Colter Jacobsen; Ted Berrigan with George Schneeman; Not an Exit with Léonie Guyer; and Repeat After Me with John Zurier.

During the 1960s he was an editorial associate at Artnews, a regular contributor to Arts, guest editor at the Museum of Modern Art, an associate producer of a program on art for public television, and taught literature and writing workshops at the New School, Yale University, and in Poets in the Schools programs. After moving to Northern California in 1970, he began editing and publishing a series of poetry books and magazines under the Big Sky imprint. He is a corresponding editor for Art in America and has contributed to such other journals as Artforum, Aperture, and Modern Painters. From 1984 to 2008 he taught art history and literature at the San Francisco Art Institute. Books of his criticism include The Sweet Singer of Modernism & Other Art Writings 1985–2003; Sudden Address: Selected Lectures 1981–2006; and For the Ordinary Artist.