Softcover. 4to. 19 leaves. Stapled front wrapper. Light toning, one small stain to first page margin, near fine.

A banana obsessed artist's book written and illustrated by Joe Brainard. One of several book works published by The Siamese Banana Press (started by Johnny Stanton) who also printed works by Paul Auster, Anne Waldman, and Tom Veitch. Along with Brainard's Cigarette Book, these works combine elements of poetry, prose, collage, comics, and gay erotica.  

From the collection of Frank Bidart, who received the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award, and the 2017 National Book Award for Poetry for his book Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016. Perhaps Bidart's most celebrated poem, "The Second Hour of the Night," is partly based on his relationship with Brainard. "The relationship was," as Bidart has said, both "more than friendship and less than a romance." His "In Memory of Joe Brainard" is a profound elegy for his friend who died of AIDS-induced pneumonia in 1994.