This broadside by John Ashbery and Joe Brainard is currently hanging in our kitchen (which recently got decked out with some new cabinets!). I bought this for my wife (then-girlfriend) back in 2006; it was our first year in New York. I remember going out to an old church on St. Mark's Place in Manhattan to the offices of the Poetry Project to pick it up -- this was the last broadside they had for sale, and is number 115/125. Before I left the apartment, the girl who helped me on the phone described the Brainard illustration as "kinda like a landscape, but kinda like a salad" and I was absolutely sold -- it was a great gift and, looking back, somewhat of a beacon previewing the collectors we'd become (we've since acquired a lettered copy of The Vermont Notebook with an original ink drawing inside).
The broadside was made to commemorate the Granary Books / Z Press edition of The Vermont Notebook and was printed by Soho Letterpress (whom I coincidentally work with now at my office). The poem is fantastic (and appropriately kitchen-y) and I'm very pleased to share it with you. Be of good cheer.
Currently reading:
The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an America Heroby Timothy Egan
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
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