Joe Brainard

(1942 - 1994)

Born in Salem, Arkansas, and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Joe Brainard moved to New York City at the age of nineteen and soon fell in with a circle of fellow artists and writers that included Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, and Ron Padgett. He is the author of I Remember, a collage of remembrances that lulls a reader into the waves of the past with its repetitive form: “I remember daydreams of dying and how unhappy everybody would be.” In 1970, after the success of the first volume, Brainard wrote three sequels; in 1975 he compiled, rearranged, and added to them to create a collected I Remember. Brainard died of AIDS-induced pneumonia in 1994.