Since When

Praise for Bill Berkson:
“Wonderful. . . . Fifty years of slow-dawning epiphany.” —San Francisco Bay Guardian
“I’d like to thank Bill Berkson for: epitomizing objectivity & subjectivity; amusedly living in the cerulean blue, alizarin crimson mixed with titanium white, & burnt sienna world we’ve got; & writing for us.” –Bernadette Mayer
“A serene master of syntactical sleight and transformer of the mundane into the marvelous.” —Publishers Weekly
Bill Berkson was a poet, art critic, and joyful participant in the best of postwar and bohemian American culture. Since When gathers the ephemera of a life well-lived, a collage of boldface names, parties, exhibitions, and literary history from a man who could write “of [Truman Capote’s Black and White] ball, which I attended as my mother’s escort, I have little recollection” and reminisce about imagining himself as a character from Tolstoy while tripping on acid at Woodstock. Gentle, witty, and eternally generous, this is Berkson, and a particular moment in American history, at its best.
Bill Berkson (New York, 1939) was a poet, critic, teacher, and curator who became active in the art and literary worlds in his early twenties. He collaborated with many artists and writers, including Alex Katz, Philip Guston, and Frank O’Hara, and his criticism appeared in ArtNews, Art in America, and elsewhere. Formerly a professor of liberal arts at the San Francisco Art Institute, he was born in New York in 1939. He died in June 2016.