From Popping Your Cherry to Having Your Cherry Picked

Padgett's In Advance of the Broken Arm published in two editions in 1964 and 1965 by C Press, is not listed in Secret Location of the Lower East Side. This is surprising since it is a classic example of C Press in its prime. Joe Brainard provided the illustrations, which differ between the two editions making the acquisition of both a necessity. The first issue is harder to get a hold of than the numbered second edition, although only 200 copies of the second edition were printed. Many of these copies were signed. Both my copies are cherry, with the second edition having a sheet of paper addressed by Padgett (??) to Bill Levy in Pennsylvania, who at the time was one of the editors of Insect Trust Gazette.

This is Padgett's first book of poems (thus popping his cherry as a poet) and the reference to Duchamp's first readymade reflects the ubiquity of Duchamp in 1963-1964 in the poetry and art scene in after his retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum. Warhol filmed the opening of the retrospective in Pasadena on October 7, 1963.

The cherries on the cover of the first edition of In Advance would re-appear on the cover of The Anthology of New York Poets published by Random House. Padgett edited the anthology and I like to think that the cherries suggest not only the beginnings of Padgett and the entire Second Generation New York School in mimeo, but also the fact that in the late 1960s/early 1970s the mainstream press, like Random House and Harper & Row, cherry-picked the mimeo scene for material.

JB