Joe Brainard: I Remember

Product Information

I’m not saying that I don’t have practically the most lofty ideas of anyone writing today, but what difference does that make? They’re just ideas. The only good thing about it is that when I get lofty enough I’ve stopped thinking and that’s when refreshment arrives. Modesty, whimsy, and clarity of design grace the work of Joe Brainard (1941-1994), an artist and writer whose evocations of memory and desire perhaps found their greatest expression in his memoir-poem I Remember. Composed of a sequence of brief recollections, the poem’s standardized format admits an incredible variety of images and feelings: "I remember Greyhound buses at night...I remember candy cigarettes like chalk...I remember leaning up against walls in queer bars...” Brainard's many drawings, collages, assemblages, and paintings, as well as his short essays and verbal-visual collaborations were celebrated during his lifetime before he stopped making art in the mid-1980s. I remember putting a piece of pumpkin bread into the microwave too long and a cloud of smoke that looked like sulfur covered my face when I opened the door. I remember that Jean Gabin, before the war, had a contract stipulating that he had to die at the end of each film. Weeding my onion-patch or hoeing rows of carrots and parsnips, crossing savannas, trailing in forests,

Joe Brainard was een Amerikaans kunstenaar en auteur die in de jaren '60 aansluiting vond bij de New York School, met Frank O'Hara als middelpunt. I like to use anaphora-heavy poems not only to show students the musicality of repetition, but to suggest a generative engine for their own work. The cascading verbosity we see in poets such as Whitman and Ginsberg shows us the expansive qualities anaphora can give a poem, which is a boon for students who fear they have nothing to say. The anaphora demands more, more, more, and is a never-ending question for the student to answer. If we look at a section of “ Howl,” for instance, that question is where:I remember the first time I met Frank O’Hara. He was walking down Second Avenue. It was a cool early Spring evening but he was wearing only a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. And blue jeans. And moccasins. I remember that he seemed very sissy to me. Very theatrical. Decadent. I remember that I liked him instantly.

It is when a remark such as “I remember the murder of Sharon Tate” appears that the reader feels something to latch onto. Words and suggestions appear that a reader may understand in part but may not put into the correct context. Within the specificity of memory, there are also moments where Perec allows for the limitations of memory and the idiosyncrasies of personal reflection to take forefront of the text, recalling the ways memory can be shaped and reshaped, to admit to the absence at hand. “I remember the radio programs ( Comme il vous plaira) presented by Jean-Pierre Morphée and ?” (76). The work concludes with an invitation to the reader to create their own list of “I Remembers” inspired by Perec’s example. I Remember is “about everybody else as much as it is about me,” he wrote his friend Anne Waldman. “And that pleases me. I mean, I feel like I am everybody. And it’s a nice feeling. It won’t last. But I am enjoying it while I can.” Part of the pleasure in reading the book, of course, comes in finding your own memories shared by someone else (nice when that happens). Another part of the pleasure comes from listening for the harmonics of the thing, the way that the memories work together and apart, never giving you everything but always giving you something. El caso es que, platicando del descubrimiento que significó leer a Braunstein, saqué a relucir mi recuerdo, solo para constatar, que tal recuerdo, era ciento por ciento una reconstrucción mía.I remember that James Stewart played the part of Glenn Miller in the biopic of this jazz musician whose most famous piece is “Moonlight Serenade.”

Surrealism and its precursor, Dadaism, originated as a philosophical and cultural movement in Europe, primarily in France, in the aftermath of World War I. The Dadaists and Surrealists rejected the authority of the supposedly “rational” thoughts and values that had led the world into war. Instead of relying on rational thought to make connections, Dadaist and Surrealist art and writing relied on the more “random” movements, images, and juxtapositions of the subconscious mind or the dreaming mind. Surrealist and Dadaist artists and thinkers believed that our subconscious and seemingly irrational thoughts are more authentic than our “conscious” thoughts, which are censored and influenced by the morals and conventions of society. The Surrealists and Dadaists had a number of techniques and games to free the conscious mind; “automatic writing” was one of those techniques. To practice automatic writing, a person must simply begin writing and continue writing without censoring any of the thoughts or images that come to mind. The writer must not stop writing what comes to mind, even though the content may seem strange or disconnected. For the Surrealists and Dadaists, this “stream of consciousness” was left unrevised, but for contemporary writers influenced by these movements, this uncensored flow of language may then be revised or mined for ideas or images. I Remember is Brainard's best-known work. Paul Auster said the memoir was "one of the few totally original books I have ever read." [2] Paul Auster and Jim Jarmusch discuss Joe Brainard’s writings– especially the brilliance of I Remember the writing is uncensored, authentic. For example, I note in the example above the reference to the Pilgrims and Indians celebrating a jolly Thanksgiving. Now: I don’t think it’s stretching things very far to say that that recollection is of a romanticised association! And we could of course parse that, and discuss what it means, e.g., in terms of decolonising the historical record. But the actual writing here is simply being honest – it’s about recalling a perception, a time and place – and it is being true to that. (Even if it’s not true to the historical record, and we hope there will have been scope for future reconstruction!) Elsewhere in the poem we get gender- and race-based descriptions that are products of that time, and there is an awful lot of sexually graphic and extremely fruity content. It means I’m always careful about selecting extracts for classes! But again: this has a truth. I remember the young actor Robert Lynen, who appeared in Poil de Carotte and in Carnet de bal (in which he had a very small part) and who died at the beginning of the war.

I'd like to be notified of new arrivals in the following categories.

Pero, no deja de transmitirnos esa puerilidad, esa inocencia, que subyace no en los recuerdos, sino en lo que quiere recordar, y cómo nos lo dice. Heerlijk, speels en vlot leesvoer, dit cultboekje uit 1975 in Nederlandse vertaling van Johannes Jonkers opgevist door uitgeverij Oevers. With these examples in mind, I show students model poems and ask them to write imitations, keeping the anaphora but letting their imaginations run free. I choose examples that reinforce different aspects of poetry as well. For instance, these excerpts from Joe Brainard’s book-length poem I Remember create the atmosphere of a remembered time and place through specific detail: I remember a piece of old wood with termites running around all over it the termite men found under our front porch. that existence has its own reason for being." This sums up the usefulness of trying out what might seem an old practice or redundant articulation or plain seemingly unoriginal repetition or extending sentences without really adding to the idea it conveys or what I'm doing right now or here I'll stop and let you read the entire poem instead or it's repetitive as well or don't tell me i didn't warn you En esta obra, Brainard, parte la naranja y la desgaja a mansalva. Se siente debajo de la superficie de las páginas, cierta orquestación, cierto murmullo de aguas que corre veladamente debajo de la tierra que pisamos en sus palabras.