Joe Brainard

Artwork by Joe Brainard. Edited by Ron Padgett.

I Remember

I Remember Christmas

The collected writings of Joe Brainard

Discover the works of Joe Brainard, whose quirky style earned him a reputation as a “recognizable American phenomenon” and “oddball classicist”—with a foreword by 4321 author Paul Auster (John Ashbery) An artist associated with the New York School of poets, Joe Brainard (1942-1994) was a wonderful writer whose one-of-a-kind autobiographical work I Remember has had a wide and growing influence. It is joined in this major new retrospective with many other pieces that for the first time present the full range of Brainard's writing in all its deadpan wit, madcap inventiveness, self-revealing frankness, and generosity of spirit. The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard gathers intimate journals, jottings, stories, one-liners, comic strips, mini-essays, and short plays, many of them available until now only as expensive rarities, if at all. “Brainard disarms us with the seemingly tossed-off, spontaneous nature of his writing and his stubborn refusal to accede to the pieties of self-importance,” writes Paul Auster in the introduction to this collection. “These little works . . . are not really about anything so much as what it means to be young, that hopeful, anarchic time when all horizons are open to us and the future appears to be without limits.” Assembled by the author’s longtime friend and biographer Ron Padgett and including fourteen previously unpublished works, here is a fresh and affordable way to rediscover a unique American artist.

A Library of America Special Publication

The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard

Julia Osuna Aguilar

«Me acuerdo es una obra maestra. Los libros supuestamente más importantes de nuestro tiempo serán olvidados uno tras otro, pero la pequeña y modesta joya de Joe Brainard perdurará. Con frases sencillas y contundentes, traza el mapa del alma humana y altera de forma permanente la manera en que miramos el mundo. Me acuerdo es a la vez increíblemente divertido y profundamente conmovedor. Además, es uno de los pocos libros completamente originales que he leído.» (PAUL AUSTER)

Me Acuerdo

Mi ricordo

Richard Brautigan

Lewis Warsh

Bill Berkson

Ted Berrigan

Robert Creeley

Michael Bond

Jim Carroll

Aram Saroyan

Tom Clark

Alice Notley

Anne Waldman

Bill Brown

Philip Whalen

Stephen Ratcliffe

Diane Di Prima

John Thorpe

David Meltzer

Lewis MacAdams

Phoebe MacAdams

Joel Weishaus

Arthur Okamura

Max Crosley

Bobbie Louise Hawkins

Duncan Mc Naughton

Jim Brodey

Ebbe Borregaard

Joanne Kyger

John Doss

Gailyn Saroyan

Keith Lampe

Lawrence Kearney

Charlie Vermont

Poetry. California Interest. Afterword by Lytle Shaw. The Song Cave presents an expanded edition of the long out of print City Lights Books classic ON THE MESA: AN ANTHOLOGY OF BOLINAS WRITING in celebration of its 50th anniversary. This is a gathering of poets, writers and artists living on or around the mesa in Bolinas, California. Not so much a school of thought as a meeting of those who happened to be at this geographical location at this wobbly point in time, several divergent movements in American poetry (Black Mountain, San Francisco Renaissance, Beat, and New York School poets) came together with new Western and mystic elements at the unpaved crossroads of Bolinas. Featuring work by: Gordin Bladwin, Bill Berkson, Ted Berrigan, Michael Bond, Ebbe Borregaard, Joe Brainard, Richard Brautigan, Jim Brodey, Bill Brown, Jim Carroll, Tom Clark, Robert Creeley, Max Crosley, Diane Di Prima, John Doss, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Lawrence Kearney, Joanne Kyger, Keith Lampe, Lewis Macadams, Phoebe Macadams, Duncan MC Naughton, David Meltzer, Alice Notley, Arthur Okamura, Stephen Ratcliffe, Aram Saroyan, Gailyn Saroyan, John Thorpe, Charlie Vermont, Anne Waldman, Lewis Warsh, Joel Weishaus, and Philip Whalen.

An Anthology of Bolinas Writers

On the Mesa

Ron Padgett

Ted Berrigan, Joe Brainard and Ron Padgett's Bean Spasmsis the defining publication of the 1960s literary/Pop scene in New York. Originally published in 1967 by Kulchur Press in an edition of 1,000, and out of print for more than 40 years, Bean Spasmsis a book many have heard about but relatively few have seen, and which--until now--has been consequently shrouded in legend. The text is comprised of collaborations between poets Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett, with further writings, illustrations and cover by artist and writer Joe Brainard. The three began collaborating in 1960, and kept a folder of their works titled "Lyrical Bullets" (a humorous homage to the well-known collaboration between Coleridge and Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads). As Ron Padgett describes, in his introduction to this new facsimile edition, their collaborations included "plays, a fictitious correspondence, a picaresque novel, goofy interviews and poems of various types and lengths, as well as mistranslations and parodies of each other's work and the work of others." Poet friends dropping by during writing sessions would also add lines, and although Berrigan and Padgett also contributed visuals, and Brainard contributed texts, all works in the book were intentionally left unattributed. Full of wild wit and joy in experimentation, competition and collaboration, Bean Spasmsis a classic document of the New York School.

Collaborations

Bean Spasms

Autoritratto

Me acuerdo y otros autorretratos

Kenward Elmslie

Pay Dirt

Bolinas Journal

Les lecteurs du fameux Je me souviens de Georges Perec se rappellent peut-être l'inscription qui figurait en tête de l'ouvrage : "Le titre, la forme et, dans une certaine mesure, l'esprit de ces textes s'inspirent des I remember de Joe Brainard." C'est donc le modèle qui est ici proposé. Anecdotes, souvenirs, fragments - ces quatre cent quatre-vingt-dix-sept brefs paragraphes composent une autobiographie délicate et sincère, de l'enfance souriante à l'adolescence bégayante, au cours de laquelle l'auteur découvrit son homosexualité, en même temps qu'ils proposent un voyage nostalgique et coloré dans l'Amérique de son temps, une traversée des thèmes dont est faite en grande partie la littérature américaine.

Joe Brainard

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