I think I first met Alice at 101 St. Mark’s Place. She was sitting cross-legged in an armchair by the window, collaging. An open notebook was on a side table by the chair. Pieces from the magazine she was cutting up covered the floor. I remember the scene as sunlit, a spring sun, but this may be from one of Ted’s poems. She asked me some questions about Romania. I told her about my hometown in Transylvania and all the great Romanian poets. I may have made some of them up, because years later when we knew each other better, she teased me by adding to whatever we were talking about, “And that was by that great Romanian poet?”

In the other room, Ted talked to Tom Veitch, who had brought me over. There was an air of lightness and amusement surrounding Alice, in my memory. A hand-knitted shawl was over her lap. Ted’s gravitas soon drew me out of the sunny room to the “serious talk” in the narrow kitchen.

The first book of poetry by Alice that I remember best was Alice Ordered Me To Be Made (1975), but I think that there was a mimeo from Yellow Press before that. I liked her early work, with its colors and flowers, impressionistic, funny, and smart.

When I founded Exquisite Corpse: a Journal of Letters and Life (1983-2016) she was among our first contributors. We planned to publish books too, and were thrilled when Alice sent us a Xerox copy of a new poetry manuscript. Exquisite Corpse Press never materialized, and I moved, and kept moving.

My archives are held by several institutions, but I always held back a few treasures. After moving back to New York in 2016, I discovered in my well-traveled stash the barely readable pages of Alice’s manuscript. Inside of it was also a good portion of Ted Berrigan’s journals. I wrote to Alice in Paris to ask if she wanted it back. She answered, graciously, that I should give it to one of her sons, Anselm or Eddie. I had no idea that she was in the hospital when she wrote back. I couldn’t find Anselm, so I handed it to Eddie one night before a reading at the Unnameable Bookstore. Anselm was already in Paris. Then Eddie flew in. Alice died on May 19, 2025, with her poet-sons at her side. Luminous, profound, an initiate to the Beyond whose voices spoke to her, she was a friend, and a contemporary. Fly easy with them many wings, dear.