I Remember

Name: I Remember
Brand: My Store
SKU: LSBOKJB388
Price: 20.0 USD
Availability: InStock

Brainard, Joe

20 USD

Date

1970

Category

Poetry

Description

I Remember is a 1970 experimental memoir by American artist Joe Brainard. It depicts his childhood in the 1940s and '50s in Oklahoma as well as his life in the '60s and '70s in New York City through a stream of consciousness list of moments and tangents that are prefixed with the phrase "I remember".

Excerpt

I remember when polio was the worst thing in the world. I remember pink dress shirts. And bola ties. I remember when a kid told me that those sour clover-like leaves we used to eat (with little yellow flowers) tasted so sour because dogs peed on them. I remember that didn’t stop me from eating them. I remember the first drawing I remember doing. It was of a bride with a very long train. I remember my first cigarette. It was a Kent. Up on a hill. In Tulsa, Oklahoma. With Ron Padgett. I remember the only time I ever saw my mother cry. I was eating apricot pie. I remember when my father would say "Keep your hands out from under the covers" as he said goodnight. But he said it in a nice way. I remember when I thought that if you did anything bad, policemen would put you in jail. I remember a girl in school one day who, just out of the blue, went into a long spiel all about how difficult it was to wash her brother’s pants because he didn’t wear underwear. 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. I remember liver. I remember the chair I used to put my boogers behind. I remember my parents’ bridge teacher. She was very fat and very butch (cropped hair) and she was a chain smoker. She prided herself on the fact that she didn’t have to carry matches around. She lit each new cigarette from the old one. She lived in a little house behind a restaurant and lived to be very old. I remember Dorothy Collins. I remember Dorothy Collins’ teeth. I remember planning to tear page 48 out of every book I read from the Boston Public Library, but soon losing interest. I remember my grade school art teacher, Mrs. Chick, who got so mad at a boy one day she dumped a bucket of water over his head. I remember one very hot summer day I put ice cubes in my aquarium and all the fish died. I remember once having to take a pee sample to the doctor and how yellow and warm it was in a jar. I remember after people are gone thinking of things I should have said but didn’t.