Packing Up for Paradise: Selected Poems 1946-1996

by James Broughton, Jim Cory (Editor)

This collection of poetry showcases the work of "the heartiest and most enthusiastic celebrant since Whitman" (Jim Cory). Above all, James Broughton delights in pleasures of body and soul - but perhaps especially those of the body - with wit and charm.

As Rain Taxi writes, "Broughton's is a poetry of revelation, not obfuscation. . . . Each poem is a celebration and a call to offset the putrefaction of complacency with a bit of devilishness."

Genres: Poetry

332 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 1997

About the author

James Broughton (November 10, 1913 - May 17, 1999) was a pioneer of experimental filmmaking, a central player in California's creative literary scene, a bard of sensuality and spirituality, an invigorated gay elder, and a preacher of Big Joy. His life's work was an attempt to discover the contradictory nature of his humanity and its roots; the result was a poetic and artistic life that inspired many. Broughton's advice to filmmakers: Follow your own weird.

Broughton was part of the San Francisco Renaissance. He was an early bard of the Radical Faeries as well as a charter member of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence serving her community as Sister Sermonetta. His life story is told in the forthcoming feature-length documentary, "Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton," set to be released in 2013-2014.

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This selection includes poems from On the Way to the Exit, The Last Sermon of Gnarley Never, Songs for Anxious Children, Sojourn in Moribundia, Visitations, An Almanac for Amorists, True & False Unicorn, A Few Parables, Tidings, Ecstasies, Lauds, Glees, Occasional Odes, Private Matters, From the Gospel According to Big Joy, and The Ballad of Mad Jenny...

From On the Way to the Exit (1987-1996)...

If reincarnation gives me a choice
I shall come back as a wind -
as a freelance breeze on the go
wherever my gusto takes me.

To be an invisible meddler
on errands on airy caprice -
to dance roughshod on the ocean,
wrestle a forest or a wheat field,
whistle under doors and garments,
life eagles aloft in my arms -
what livelier sport could there be?

When I come back as a wind
I will blow down the barriers of shame
and kiss every mouth I desire.

- Windward Ho, pg. 37

From Songs for Anxious Children (1946-1973)...

Button button,
what good is my button?
Does it hold me together, fasten me right?
I pull it, I push it,
I try to unhinge it
and yet it just sticks in there tight.

Do Mommy and Poppy both have one?
Does it have some use when you grow up tall?
What the heck do I do with it now
and why is it on my anatomy?

I'm beginning to learn
what things can be done
with the other parts that are part of me.
But button button,
what good is a button
that doesn't unbutton at all?

- Ticklish Subject, pg. 56

From Sojourn in Moribundia (1946-1953)...

So are we all, in our labyrinths.
Is inert sorrow plugged in to stay?
A plow to break the otiose, please!
For a furbelow of freedom if nothing more.

No breathing room in these lap-dog kennels?
Merely speedier crutches of newer driftwood
to go hopping again around the mirrors
with a woodener pout to whittle at?

A little arson, please, a little aerification
to dare some miracle of small surprises!
At least a bauble, at least!
Or so are we stalled, in our labyrinths.

- Call for Desperate Measure, pg. 91

From Visitations (1959-1980)...

This way gentle men
to the Ineffable Lollapalooza
We offer you the niftiest Half & Half in captivity
Get your tickets now
See the Original Indivisible

This way boys and boygirls
to the Ideal Impossible
Here is the Matchless Catchall alive and kicking
all twosome imaginable
in one humdinger package

Step inside misses and misfits
Acknowledge your symptoms
Prepare for travesties and profound transvestitures
This is the morality-shaking magician
Androgyne the Great

Behold the unseemly hermaphrodite
as he really seems
Is he the master of your questionable solution?
Is he the mistress of
your insoluble question?

Warning
He is addicted to effrontery
He can mess up the neatest arrangements
He can make certain that
your squirmings engulf you

He is a harmless rascal
He is a revolutionary harlot
He offers you nothing less than the risk of everything
He desires all your desires
He prickles with fecundity

Cinningest of cunts
cockadoodle of all cocks
he will dive for treasure in your deep vaginas
he will grasp your testes
and play ball with heaven

What more could you want?
What are you afraid of?
Does no one here wish to embrace the Celestial Totality?
Does no one want to live out
the whole holy story?

- At the Androgyne Carnival, pg. 104-105

From An Almanac for Amorists (1949-1955)...

Is there something dull about the innocent?
That your simple glowing is a glow too pure, and an irritant?

Were I a reforming pagan or Blake's holy child
I might come to you to play at angles incorruptible,
in the childhood of a world set its age aside
and embrace a maid demure with dulcet mood inviolable.

But I am too bedeviled by tricky jigs of Lucifer
to relish minuets Goody-Two-Shoed and petite.
Though the world looks dancing candy to the green-armed amateur,
I, a Peter Pan unlikely, now prefer more bitter sweets.

So, despite your simple glowing both adorable and innocent,
purity that bores is strictly God's divertissement.

- Don Giovanni to the Very Nice New Virgin, pg. 140

From A Few Parables (1950-1971)...

It was the Worm who said to me,
Do you seek the ultimate mystery
of where the Inmost Light may dwell?
I'm never asked, but I could tell.

Men search for it in starry places,
in cloistered cells, in pretty faces.
But they go looking with eyelids shut.
I tell you glory lives in the gut.

Within that dark metamorphic maze
Heaven and Hell conjointly blaze.
What else gives light to Eternity?
the Worm, smiling, said to me.

- It Was the Worm, pg. 170

From Tidings (1965)...

I asked the Sea how deep things are:

O said She, that depends upon
how far you want to go.

Well, I have a sea in me, said I,
do you have a me in you?

I'll look, said the Sea
but that's apt to go rather deep.

And she broke a wave over my foot.

* * *

I asked the Sea
how to cope with my life.

Yes, She said, Yes...

No no, said I,
I want to know
how to be strong like you.

Yes, She said, Yes...
kissing the arms of the cove.

[...]

- I Asked the Sea, pg. 175

From Ecstasies (1970-1996)...

Basking in the sunbath of your libido
my epidermis can't tell night from day
Winds whistle through my urethra
my pressure points bulge and quiver
my pubic hairs stand on end
I get out of breath trying to sit still

Can't we move to a neighborhood of lovers
slip out of our blistered skins
fill the house with ragas and Clicquot
and make a habit of mutual excess?
We have enough heating equipment
to furnish every room with astonishment

- Sunburn Serenade, pg. 214

From Lauds (1968-1993)...

This is It.
and I am It
and You are It
and so is That
and He is It
and She is It
and It is It
and That is That.

O It is This
and It is Thus
and It is Them
and It is Us
and It is Now
and here It is
and here We are
so This is It.

- This Is It, pg. 229

From Glees (1968-1996)...

Do not ask where
we go from here
Nobody knows
Some think they do
bu nobody really knows
anything
about anything

We are only gurgles
in the stream
and the stream doesn't
know where it is going
either
It is just going
It is just
going with its nature
as far as that
will take it

And with its nature
it has to take along
a horde of
gurgles
who are forever asking
where they are
gurgling to

Everything
is going beautifully
nowhere

- Gurgles, pg. 252

From Occasional Odes (1957-1995)...

An old fondler an old giggler
here I go again on my annual hop.
As long as I can bounce
I'm unsinkable.
Pass me the buck
Pass me the unbuckled!
Love's the best rundown
for the aches of mortality.

I travel with a light foot
with two feet when I can get them
off to rescue the joy of life.
Watch out leadfooted pigheads!
To uplift my legwork
I quirk for a living,
I keep my crackpot on
a constant simmer.

For my fizzles and botches
I refuse to apologize.
I can still manage a trill
and keep my toes tapping.
So I go on humming and strumming
and herming and sperming
as if my life depended on it.
Because it does!

- Dance for My Seventy-Second, pg. 264

From Private Matters (1970-1996)...

There's more than a little déjà in my vu
I loiter at offramps and caravan stops
hoping for a hitch to New Vivacity.

Years of gravity have eroded my feet
with rickety pivots for any pirouette.
I massage my toes to keep them from whining.

After I kneel on my prayerful bones
to request manna from the High Provider
I have to beg someone to help me up.

My appetite for bliss keeps me going.
Though I may never sample the Great Delight
I am glad to know it is still on the menu.

- An Appetite for Bliss, pg. 284

[Stephen Silha · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Broughton's poetry goes from the sublime to the ridiculous! This book gives you the array of his career, playing and dancing with words, creating words (like the verb exuberate), delving into sex, sense, and spirit. You won't believe the vastness of his imagination or his panoply of emotions, and how masterfully he sets it all on the page.

This collection inspired me to make a documentary about him, http://www.bigjoy.org

[Kitten Calfee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Open to any practically any page of this delightful tome and you'll find something witty, charming & entertaining. This is one of my favorite collections of James Broughton poetry (along with Special Deliveries: New and Selected Poems) because there's very little not to like here. Also: it has hefty excerpts of several rare & hard to find out-of-print Broughton books like Little Sermons of the Big Joy & AN ALMANAC FOR AMORISTS. Anyone who likes poetry even a tiny bit will love this book!