From Publishers Weekly
Poets Frank O'Hara and Bill Berkson collaborated on several works in the early '60s, collected for the first time in Hymns of St. Bridget & Other Writings. The pieces include a cycle of poems inspired by a church on New York City's Lower East Side ("My heart is corresponding oddly and with odd things and I sometimes wonder if the future holds nothing but the Surgical-Dental Co. and Disney the light is getting dim and a softness is settling over the aluminum appliances and the fire escapes and a fresh green paint over my royal flush heart"), prose poetry created for the 1961 New York City Ballet program and a play about a transatlantic flight. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Joanne Kyger- The Bolinas World Tribune
"Written with seamless agility and brilliant humor"

Anselm Hollo- Naropa University
"Phenomenal! Positively Flabbergasting!"

Rain Taxi Review of Books, Summer 2002
"Beautiful! A Treasure!"

The Boston Review, Summer 2003
"A pinnacle of collaborative poetics!"

Book Description
This book comprises the full run of poetry and prose the two poets wrote in collaboration between 1960 and 1964, including songs in praise of the master New York School painters Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston, a play written on a jet over the Atlantic, some ficticious letters, and an unfinished novel.

About the Author
Frank O'Hara is a legendary figure of the New York School of painters and poets from the 50s and 60s. Only two books were published in his life time "Lunch Poems" (1964) and "Meditations in an Emergency" (1957). He died in 1966. His Collected poems, edited by Donald Allen was published in 1972. Bill Berkson met Frank O'Hara in the late 1950's while still a student at The New School in New York City. Bill Berkson is an art critic/writer, poet, and teacher. He is the author of many books of poetry including most recently "Fugue State" and "Serenade". He lives and works in San Francisco

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This book contains rare unpublished and out of print poems, a play, and an unfinished 'novel', all written in collaboration in the early 1960's. HYMNS comprises the full run of poetry and prose the two poets wrote incollaboration between 1960 and 1964. Two-thirds of these have never before appeared in book form. Berkson's and O'Hara's "hymns," inspired by the crooked steeple of the Church of St. Bridget on New York's Lower East Side,address themes of love, protestation, travel and more. (The final two are songs in praise of the New York School master painters, Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston.) The other writings include further collaborative poems; a lengthy epistolary fiction involving two long-lost brothers, Angelicus and Fidelio Fobb; Marcia, an Unfinished Novel (with Patsy Southgate), a play written on a jetliner over the Atlantic, and dizzying notes on the New York City Ballet and the French 'cubist' poet Pierre Reverdy.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly