Bean Spasms. Collaborations. Illustrated & Drawings by Joe Brainard

(N. Y.: Kulchur Press, 1967). First edition, paperback issue. Signed by Padgett, Berrigan and Brainard on the title-page. Padgett has drawn a bean surrounded by lightning flashes with the caption "Caramba!" intersecting the title, and Berrigan has written "Owned and Assigned (with pleasure) to Burt Britton" at the bottom of the page. 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. A tifle rubbed, otherwise a fine copy.. (BRAINARD, Joe).. Small 4to, original pictorial wrappers. A tifle rubbed, otherwise a fine copy.