Book Review of The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard
Joe Brainard was our Rimbaud.
Except he did it differently.
He was a painter too.
That’s what he said he was.
He didn’t say he was a writer.
But he wrote a lot.
And I love what he wrote.
I take my poetry too seriously.
Shit like that.
That why I’m writing this.
Joe was a nice guy, it seems like.
And he was from Tulsa.
Too bad Verlaine and all those other dudes
Didn’t know that Rimbaud was their Joe Brainard.
It would have lightened things up for them.
Like it lightened things up for me.
But what is “it”?
Like Rimbaud wouldn’t have gone to Africa.
He could have stayed home.
He could have taken up painting.
But that’s how history is.
It never tells the whole truth.