picture in Joe of Joe Brainard, Ron Padgett, Dick Gallup and another guy, high school pals at work on the literary journal. all 4 have short dark hair and glasses, primal nerd times 4. one sees Brainard as an exceptionally industriuous and creative artist, at the same time oddly unsure of himself. can't say I know his work well but both his art and his poetry (and his journal and letters, as excerpted here) are vivid with a happy curiosity. there's a goofy element to his work that does not conflict with its seriousness. you don't want to speak too much of his sweetness for fear that that image will overwhelm the darkness in his work. he had a frailty to him but jeez he could talk about the tenderest wounds and confusions freely, bravely. he associated with a lot of people who were willing to back him up. true as well with Schuyler. that scene seems quite tight. I'm sure that there were more conflicts within it than I've heard about, but still, it hung together. I got thinking of Truman Capote. who was highly motivated as a young writer (not as an older one), but glib. he came to feast on notoriety, then notoriety feasted on him. his claim to fame, really, is the extended New Yorker article, but he took it to the bank. Brainard's unsureness didn't stop him, whereas Capote froze. Capote went all Bianca Jagger and Lee Radziwill, worried that his rep didn't match his output, dah-dee-dah. there's something important here that I'm just not articulating. there's a quality, lack of anchor it seems, in some artists. Brainard, Capote, Berrigan seem anchorless somehow, whereas Koch, and O'Hara (for instance) do seem achored. family can be an anchor, but aint the only. it doesn't have to do with 'how good an artist one is'. drugs and alcohol certainly have something to do with this quality. and it is interesting to see how it is dealt with. Brainard always seems to be floating away, that's how I read it. I don't want to play the Hollywood vision of artist but there is an artistic battle: the difficulties, which is the beat of bounding beyond one's comfort. there's also the notion of fame, context of integrity, how not to adapt to the pleasure of acclaim. you see this battle quite ferociously in Dickinson and Keats, juggling inward and outward. I guess I'll trail off here, but there's something...