This is what Peter looked like when poet Ted Berrigan introduced us in the 1960s. We became instant, if wary, friends. Hearing Peter read his "Paris Sonnets" back then inspired me to transform an autobiographical piece I'd been working on for years into "The South Orange Sonnets" with the attitude of working-class New Jersey trumping the Paris I had yet to encounter.
In the early 1970s I was teaching at a college in DC and taking the train often to NYC for poetry readings and other events and would usually have lunch with Peter and then make the rounds of the galleries where he'd deliver mini-lectures on the art there, turning me on to some of my favorite artists, like Eva Hesse. In the late '70s and early '80s when I lived in Manhattan, we'd see each other at events and occasionally get together and the same after I moved to LA and he'd be visiting and, for a while, even living there.
By the time I moved back to Jersey at the turn of the century we weren't in touch as much but I was always delighted to see him at various events and always let him know how much I enjoyed his weekly art reviews in The NewYorker. Reading them was for me like a visit form him. He was a terrific poet and one of the great prose stylists of our time, always worth reading even when you don't agree with him. Rest in Poetry (and poetic prose) Peter. And condolences to his wife, Brooke, and daughter, Ada.
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