The Sonnets. Editor: Ron Padgett

(N. Y.): Lorenz & Ellen Gude, 1964. First edition of Berrigan's first book. Limited to 300 numbered copies; this one out of series. Fischer p. 24. In 1978, Berrigan told Anne Waldman, "My technical achievement in The Sonnets was to conceive the sonnet as fourteen units of one line each. I don't think it had been done that way much before. I don't think it had been broken down much more than into two couplets, so I had a lot more variables to work with and a lot more possibilities of structures. I was just like cubism. I was totally influenced by what my take on cubism was. Take all those planes, put them flat up like this, and they're different. They go this way and then they don't. They turn into optical illusions." - Berrigan to Anne Waldman in 1978, from Talking in Tranquility: Interviews with Ted Berrigan. Edited by Stephen Ratcliffe & Leslie Scalopino. (Bolinas & Oakland, CA: Avenue B / O Books, 1991), p. 134. Small chip in wrappers, otherwise a fine copy with the back cover that is almost always missing. 4to, mimeographed sheets stapled together, original wrappers with cover by Joe Brainard. Small chip in wrappers, otherwise a fine copy with the back cover that is almost always missing.