The Virgin Of Bennington

The Story

After a sheltered upbringing in Hawaii, Kathleen Norris was woefully unprepared for Bennington College in the 1960s, with its counterculture of drugs, sex, and bohemianism. But it was also at Bennington that she discovered her great love of poetry, which carried her to New York City at a time when a new generation of poets was rattling the establishment and filling the streets and schools and libraries with a sense of urgency. This is Norris's memoir of that time, when she worked at the Academy of American Poets in the day and hung out with Andy Warhol's crowd at night. It is an inspiring tribute to poetry and a stunning evocation of a time and place that is all but forgotten: New York City in the late sixties.