Nonfiction. In 113 short chapters, Ron Padgett"s precision prose travels back over the twenty-five years of his close friendship with Ted Berrigan, the legendary poet whose life and work transformed a generation and whose death in 1983 at age forty-eight left a significant rent in the fabric of the American poetry scene. In crisp, clear verbal snapshots, Padgett recaptures the student years in Tulsa and the free-wheeling , scruffy enchantment of their lives in New York City in the early 1960"s, a time of low rent and cheap meals, of foreign movies, of hero worship and budding friendships, of endless books and all-night talk-that once-only time when youth"s energy is fueled by an intense love of art and poetry.