fait accompli on Serendipity Books.

I spent many hours there as an adolescent. It used to be on Shattuck Ave. I got my dad to drop me off there and come get me several hours later. I bought books by Tony Towle, Joseph Ceravolo, John Koethe, Kenneth Koch, and others I probably don't remember. That was the germ of my New York School collection, although some books got misplaced over the years.

What books did I own when I was 17 and beginning college? I know I owend about 100 books of poetry, although I cannot reconstruct the entire collection in my memory.

Berryman, The Dreams Songs. I had both the original 77 and the expanded version.

Lowell. Life Studies.

Cummings. I had the Collected Poems. [no apologies]

Josephine Miles. Selected Poems. [this is still at my mom's house]

Ashbery. Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. I wish I had this edition; it would be worth a lot of money.

Koch. The Pleasures of Peace. Ko. Sleeping with Women. Maybe a few others.

O'Hara. Selected Poems.

Gary Snyder. Turtle Island. This came out and won the Pulitzer when I was about 16.

Williams. Pictures from Brueghel.

Ginsberg. Howl. Reality Sandwiches.

A few books by James Tate.

I had some Richard Eberhardt, some Karl Shapiro, who lived a few blocks away. Stevens? Some "Minor Poets of the New York School." Towle.

Possibly A Coney Island of the Mind. A selected Neruda in translation; I didn't know Spanish yet. I might have had some books by poets that no longer interest me, like Bly. I know I had never heard of Jack Spicer, for example.

***

Later: also Pound and Eliot. Blake. A decent edition of Herrick. Breton, Young Cherry Trees...