Carol Bergé

Carol Bergé (1928–2006) was an American poet, highly active in the literary, performing and visual arts renaissance of the 1960s and 1970s in New York City. In the 1980s a scandal in academia and her choice to fictionalize it cost her teaching jobs as well as support from the publishing industry. From there she championed antiquing as a profession, taking an extended sabbatical from writing.

A native of New York City, Berge was an organizer of the Lower East Side (East Village) bohemian arts scene in Manhattan. She studied at New York University, The New School, and others for a decade, opting out of a degree program. Alongside, she married twice and divorced, raising a son as a single mother.

Travel and relocation were major components of her lifestyle. Paris, Manhattan, and Santa Fe remained her favorite cities. She attended the Vancouver poetry seminar at the University of British Columbia in 1962, and wrote The Vancouver Report (1964), a summary of that event. She published/edited the literary magazine Center, from 1970-1984. Associates in her circle included (however briefly) Allen Ginsberg, Denise Levertov, Ronald Tavel, Jackson Mac Low, Mickey Ruskin, Carolee Schneemann, Gregory Corso, Judith Malina and Paul Blackburn.

While giving readings and working her manuscripts, she taught at Goddard College; the University of Southern Mississippi, where she edited the Mississippi Review; the University of New Mexico; and Wright State University, among other institutions. A quiet scandal broke in 1984 among those "in the know" when she published Secrets, Gossip and Slander, a self-described "Derrida" style of prose that blends fact and fiction with a political and social or philosophical thrust. It essentially ended her literary career. A few years later she became estranged from her son. Yet over the ensuing decades she persisted, soliciting mini-memoirs from associates for her tome on the origins of coffeehouse poetry in New York, Light Years; she also resumed writing fiction for her collection on antiques-traders titled Antics: Passionate Stories. With the assistance of a publisher and an editor she completed both books during the last year of her life.

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