Ron Padgett
Poet
Poet and author associated with the New York School and known for such works as Great Balls of Fire, The big something, and You Never Know. He collaborated with Ted Berrigan on a 1967 work entitled Bean Spasms: Poems and Prose.
He attended Columbia University and went on to study creative writing at Wagner College. His early teachers included Kenneth Koch, Kay Boyle, and Howard Nemerov.
He co-founded a publishing company called Full Court Press.
He grew up in Oklahoma and founded a literary journal called The White Dove Review while he was still in high school.
His poems were influenced by the work of Walt Whitman.