Out of print for more than 40 years, Bean Spasms is a facsimille of a classic New York School collaboration between poets Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett, with further writings, illustrations and cover by artist and writer Joe Brainard Ted Berrigan, Joe Brainard and Ron Padgett's Bean Spasms is 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 Spasms is a book many have heard about but ...
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Out of print for more than 40 years, Bean Spasms is a facsimille of a classic New York School collaboration between poets Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett, with further writings, illustrations and cover by artist and writer Joe Brainard Ted Berrigan, Joe Brainard and Ron Padgett's Bean Spasms is 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 Spasms is 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 Spasms is a classic document of the New York School.
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Add this copy of Bean Spasms, Collaborations By Ted Berrigan & Ron to cart. $125.00, fair condition, Sold by The Book Trader rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Philadelphia, PA, UNITED STATES, published 1967 by Kulchur Press.
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Seller's Description:
Illustrated by Joe Brainerd. Fair. 202 pages, cover with some pieces missing along spine and spine edges, spine taped with celotape, 3 inch piece of masking tape inside front cover, interior pages basically sound and clean though there are a few smudges or spots.; 4to.
Add this copy of Bean Spasms to cart. $195.00, good condition, Sold by The Chatham Bookseller rated 3.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Madison, NJ, UNITED STATES, published 1967 by Kulchur Press.
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Seller's Description:
Joe Brainard. Good. Large Octavo. 202pgs. stiff pictorial wraps. creased corners on fronrt panel, the upper corner is tender. Internally clean, unmarked. A collection of poetry and vignettes by collaborators and 60s counter-culture poets Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett. Illustrated by Joe Brainard, this is A rare and historical example of the New York School of poets and artists active in the 50's and 60's.
Add this copy of Bean Spasms: Collaborations to cart. $350.00, very good condition, Sold by Cleveland Book Company rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Rocky River, OH, UNITED STATES, published 1967 by (Kulchur Press).
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Seller's Description:
Near fine. Quarto, 202pp., illustrated. Near fine in the publisher's printed wrappers, with some nicks to the edges. Clear acetate dust jacket--which is contemporary and possibly original--with some small chips and creases. "Bean Spasms is perhaps Berrigan's and Padgett's most famous collaboration. In 1972, Berrigan told Barry Alpert about how "Big Travel Dialogue" came to be written: "We got the title off Frank's "Little Travel Dialogue." We were into a lot of collaborations in those days...and we decided to write these letters to each other....the rule was that we would write them as if we were both traveling around the country and we were each writing from different places....We actually wrote them as letters, and we did mail them to each other because I was living downtown in New York and Ron was living uptown. We always put them in envelopes and addressed them though sometimes I just took them up there since I was going up there anyway or Ron would bring them down. Often I'd draw the stamp instead of putting a new stamp on it and draw cancellation marks through it. But we were serious about the form. Ron wrote all of his in his house uptown and I wrote all of mine downtown in my house....They gave us a chance to say a lot of things to each other that we really wanted to say too, the way you can in letters."-Berrigan to Barry Alpert in 1972, from Talking in Tranquility: Interviews with Ted Berrigan. Edited by Stephen Ratcliffe & Leslie Scalopino. (Bolinas & Oakland, CA: Avenue B / O Books, 1991), p. 40.
