Ron Padgett

Poet, editor, and translator Ron Padgett was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As a high-school student he founded the avant-garde literary journal The White Dove Review with his friends and fellow students Joe Brainard and Dick Gallup. Soliciting and publishing work from poets such as Allen Ginsbergand Robert Creeley, the magazine ran for five issues. Padgett moved to New York City in 1960 to attend Columbia College. Awarded a Fulbright in 1965, Padgett spent a year in Paris, France studying and translating French poetry. He eventually made his home in New York City’s East Village and became a vital part of the second generation New York School Poets, a group that included Brainard, Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley, Bill Berkson, and others.

CPC Readings

Friday, June 1, 1979
with Ted Berrigan
Museum of Contemporary Art

Wednesday, March 20, 2002
The Art Institute of Chicago

Wednesday, November 10, 2004
with Anselm Hollo
The Art Institute of Chicago

Poetry by Ron Padgett

Strawberries in Mexico
At 14th Street and First Avenue
Is a bank and in the bank the sexiest teller of all time
Next to her the greatest thing about today
Is today itself
Through which I go up
To buy books
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Stairway to the Stars
“And then there were three
whereas before there had been four
or two
And then there were four or two.”
Thus spake the King.
No one dared ask what it meant.
He seemed satisfied by the beauty
of the logic that had arrived,
the royal hall now lightly radiant
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