I Remember
By Joe Brainard
(Granary Books, orig. ©1975, ©2001; paperback $12.00)
Long before the writing-practice icon Natalie Goldberg popularized the prompt “I remember” in her best-selling mid-eighties book Writing Down the Bones, there was the writer and artist Joe Brainard (1941–1994). (Note: I made an interesting discovery during the writing of this recommendation. A man named Joe Brainard, the same Joe Brainard, did the cover art on my 1986 copy of Writing Down the Bones.)
The multi-talented Brainard was associated most closely with the New York School, a group of mostly NYC–based painters, dancers, musicians, and poets (e.g., Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, Bernadette Mayer, Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley) who were creating, performing, publishing, and collaborating during the 1950s and ‘60s.
A small publisher, Angel Hair Press, directed by NY School poet Anne Waldman, first printed Brainard’s I Remember in 1970, in a limited edition run of 700 copies. Since then, it has been published in different forms and in larger print runs by bigger and more prominent presses, getting the wider circulation it’s always deserved.
Not quite a memoir, not quite a poem, I Remember consists of more than 1,000 moving, funny, sometimes-heartbreaking, declarative “I remember” entries. It covers the landscape, both personal and public, of his upbringing (and many others’) in the 1940s and ‘50s. The entries include reflections on growing up, coming out, being “queer,” being ashamed, becoming an artist and writer. It covers Brainard’s childhood and personal life, including fantasies and other private admissions. It covers his public life, consumer products he remembers, characters from his childhood and his adulthood who he both loved and disdained. It covers his adult world — his artistic confidantes and mentors, venues he frequented, discoveries he made about himself — as he came of age as a gay man and artist in New York City.
He remembers “how much rock and roll music can hurt.”
He remembers “daydreams of going blind and how sorry everyone would feel for me.”
He remembers “cinnamon toothpicks,” “Necco wafers,” and “snap, crackle, and pop.”\
He remembers “having a long serious discussion with Ted Berrigan once about if a homosexual painter could paint the female nude as well as a ‘straight’ painter could.”
He remembers “St. Christopher medals,” “the big sponge dice dangling up front,” “the organ music from As the World Turns,” and “when polio was the worst thing in the world.”
He remembers “those times of not knowing if you feel really happy or really sad. (Wet eyes and a high heart.)”
He remembers and remembers and remembers. And as you read, you start to remember, too. As Ron Padgett, poet and lifelong friend of Brainard’s, writes in the afterword of the edition I own, “Few people can read this book and not feel like grabbing a pencil to start writing their own parallel versions . . . Even the smallest [remembrance] can exert a mysterious tug.”
I remember when I got a hybrid poem-essay accepted at a literary magazine I love. I remember the note the editor sent me with my official letter of acceptance. I remember it said, “I admire your piece the way I admire Joe Brainard’s I Remember.” And I remember feeling slightly stupid because I’d never heard of it, or of him. I remember looking up Joe Brainard and finding the book and reading it straight through in two sittings. I remember I couldn’t believe I could have come this far as a writer without reading I Remember. I remember asking people if they’d heard of it, heard of him. “No, I haven’t.” “No.” “Mmmmh, no I don’t think so.” I remember thinking that it was such a shame. I remember thinking that one day I would try and let more people know about it, that I would say to them: you have to read this.
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I Remember is available at your local independent bookseller. To find an independent bookstore near you, click here. You can read more about Joe Brainard, his books and artwork, click here.
