The following is excerpted from Kay Gabriel's introduction to Kevin Killian's Padam Padam: Collected Poems, edited by Jason Morris and Evan Kennedy. Here’s a story from Kevin Killian’s memoir Bedrooms Have Windows, in a chapter titled “Poetry.” He goes to a reading in New York by the poet Ted Berrigan and discovers he doesn’t understand Berrigan’s writing at all. In response to what feels like humiliation, Killian steals first the hors d’oeuvres, then the wine, then “hundreds of pills—probably Ted’s also . . . it was like Valley of the Dolls.” Then the youthful Kevin Killian hits the road…

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