The 1967 Game Calendar

New York]: [Boke Press], 1967. First Edition. Softcover quarto, staple-bound in B&W paper wrappers, unpaginated with text and drawings on rectos [24]. Very good, light wear about perimeter, moderate soiling and discoloration to wrappers. Twelve pages each of text and poems for each month of the calendar year, 1967. While Elmslie and Brainard would go on to collaborate many times, this is one of the earliest instances, and only the second jointly published: it is preceded by a few Brainard covers for Elmslie's published librettos and a similarly formatted and even-weighted collaboration in 1965, THE BABY BOOK (Bamberger, p.19).

The two began collaborating soon after their first meeting, which varies by source. Brainard says they met on the Staten Island Ferry in October 1964, whereas Ted Berrigan claims it was at a South Ferry/Battery Park Poets for Peace Reading in 1962, or in April 1964 at Frank O'Hara's birthday party. No matter where you place the starting gun, they would stay lovers, collaborators, and partners until Joe's death in May 1994. A wonderful and scarce early document of this important and inspiring kinship.