James Broughton

1/3

Please join our mailing list to to stay up to date and thanks for listening!

James Broughton (November 10, 1913 – May 17, 1999) was an American poet and poetic filmmaker. He was part of the San Francisco Renaissance, a precursor to the Beat poets. He was an early bard of the Radical Faeries,[1] as well as a member of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,[2] serving the community as Sister Sermonetta.

Born to wealthy parents in Modesto, California, Broughton's father died when he was five years old in the 1918 influenza epidemic, and he spent his childhood in San Francisco. Before he was three, "Sunny Jim" experienced a transformational visit from his muse, Hermy, which he describes in his autobiography, Coming Unbuttoned (1993):[3]

I remember waking in the dark and hearing my parents arguing in the next room. But a more persistent sound, a kind of whirring whistle, spun a light across the ceiling. I stood up in my crib and looked into the backyard. Over a neighbor’s palm tree a pulsing headlamp came whistling directly toward me. When it had whirled right up to my window, out of its radiance stepped a naked boy. He was at least three years older than I but he looked all ages at once. He had no wings, but I knew he was angel-sent: his laughing beauty illuminated the night and his melodious voice enraptured my ears….

He insisted I would always be a poet even if I tried not to be….Despite what I might hear to the contrary the world was not a miserable prison, it was a playground for a nonstop tournament between stupidity and imagination. If I followed the game sharply enough, I could be a useful spokesman for Big Joy.

Broughton was kicked out of military school for having an affair with a classmate, and attended Stanford University before dropping out just before his class graduated in 1935. In 1945, he won the Alden Award given by the Stanford Dramatists' Alliance for his original screenplay Summer Fury.[4] He spent time in Europe during the 1950s, where he received an award in Cannes from Jean Cocteau for the "poetic fantasy" of his film The Pleasure Garden, made in England with partner Kermit Sheets.

Through his career, Broughton produced 23 books and 23 films. In 1967's "summer of love," Broughton made a film, The Bed, which broke taboos against frontal nudity and won prizes at many film festivals. The film rekindled Broughton's filmmaking and led to more films including The Golden Positions, This Is It, The Water Circle, High Kukus, and Dreamwood. Broughton's films developed a following, especially among students at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught film (and wrote Seeing the Light, a book about filmmaking) and artistic ritual.

With Joel Singer[edit]

This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "James Broughton" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

As poet Jack Foley writes in All: A James Broughton Reader, "In Broughton’s moment of need, Hermy appeared again in the person of a twenty-five-year-old Canadian film student named Joel Singer... Broughton's meeting with Singer was a life-changing, life-determining moment,[5] that animated his consciousness with a power that lasted until his death." In 2004, Singer wrote of their long relationship and collaboration in White Crane.[6]

With Singer, Broughton traveled and made more films – Hermes Bird (1979), a slow-motion look at an erection shot with the camera developed to photograph atomic bomb explosions, The Gardener of Eden (1981), filmed when they lived in Sri Lanka, Devotions (1983), a study of male relationships, and Scattered Remains (1988), a tribute to Broughton's poetry and filmmaking.

Broughton explored death deeply throughout his life.[7] He died in May 1999 with champagne on his lips, in the house in Port Townsend, Washington, where he and Singer had lived for 10 years.[8] His last words were: "My creeping decrepitude has crept me all the way to the crypt." His gravestone in a Port Townsend cemetery reads, "Adventure – not predicament."[9]

Personal life[edit]

In Coming Unbuttoned, Broughton remarks on his love affairs with both men and women. Among his male lovers was gay activist Harry Hay.[10]

Broughton had many creative love affairs during the San Francisco Beat Scene. He briefly lived with the film critic Pauline Kael and they had a daughter, Gina, who was born in 1948.[citation needed][11] Broughton put off marriage until age 49, when he married Suzanna Hart in a three-day ceremony on the Pacific coast, documented by his friend, the experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage. Hart and Broughton had two children, and built a counter-culture community along with friends including Alan Watts, Michael McClure, Anna Halprin, and Imogen Cunningham.

Broughton is the subject of the 2012 documentary film, Big Joy: the adventures of James Broughton[12] from Stephen Silha, Eric Slade, Dawn Logson and cinematographer Ian Hinkle.[13]

Filmography[edit]

The Potted Psalm (with Sidney Peterson) (1946) 18 min Mother's Day (1948) 22 min 16 mmAdventures of Jimmy (1950) 11 min 16 mm
Four in the Afternoon (1951) 15 min 16 mm
Loony Tom, The Happy Lover (1951) 10.5 min 16 mm The Pleasure Garden (1953) 38 min 35 mm The Bed (1968) 20 min 16 mm Nuptiae (1969) 14 min 16 mm The Golden Positions (1970) 16 mm
This Is It (1971) 10 min 16 mm Together (with Joel Singer) (1976) 3 min 16 mm Erogeny (1976) 6 min 16 mm
Windowmobile (with Joel Singer) (1977) 8 min 16 mm Song of the Godbody (with Joel Singer) (1977) 11 min 16 mm Hermes Bird (1979) 11 min 16 mm The Gardener of Eden (with Joel Singer) (1981) 8.5 min 16 mm
Shaman Psalm (with Joel Singer) (1981) 7 min 16 mm Devotions (with Joel Singer) (1983) 22 min 16 mm
Scattered Remains (with Joel Singer) (1988) 14 min 16 mm
Songs for Certain Children (1947) San Francisco: Centaur PressThe Playground (1949) San Francisco: Centaur Press Musical Chairs (1950) San Francisco: Centaur Press An Almanac for Amorists (1955) Paris: Collection Merlin True & False Unicorn (1957) New York: Grove Press The Right Playmate (1964) San Francisco: Pearce & Bennett Tidings (1965) San Francisco: Pterodactyl Press High Kukus (1969) New York: Jargon Society
A Long Undressing (1971) New York: Jargon Society Seeing the Light (1977) republished as Making Light of It (1992) San Francisco: City Lights Books Odes for Odd Occasions (1977) San Francisco: Manroot
Dreamwood (1972) 45 min 16 mm High Kukus (1973) 3 min 16 mm
Testament (1974) 20 min 16 mm The Water Circle (1975) 3 min 16 mm Together (with Joel Singer) (1976) 3 min 16 mm Erogeny (1976) 6 min 16 mm Windowmobile (with Joel Singer) (1977) 8 min 16 mm
Song of the Godbody (with Joel Singer) (1977) 11 min 16 mm Hermes Bird (1979) 11 min 16 mm
The Gardener of Eden (with Joel Singer) (1981) 8.5 min 16 mm Shaman Psalm (with Joel Singer) (1981) 7 min 16 mm Devotions (with Joel Singer) (1983) 22 min 16 mm Scattered Remains (with Joel Singer) (1988) 14 min 16 mmSongs for Certain Children (1947) San Francisco: Centaur Press The Playground (1949) San Francisco: Centaur Press Musical Chairs (1950) San Francisco: Centaur Press
An Almanac for Amorists (1955) Paris: Collection Merlin True & False Unicorn (1957) New York: Grove Press
The Right Playmate (1964) San Francisco: Pearce & Bennett Tidings (1965) San Francisco: Pterodactyl Press
High Kukus (1969) New York: Jargon Society A Long Undressing (1971) New York: Jargon Society
Seeing the Light (1977) republished as Making Light of It (1992) San Francisco: City Lights Books
Odes for Odd Occasions (1977) San Francisco: Manroot Press The Androgyne Journal (1977) Oakland, CA: Scrimshaw Press Hymns to Hermes (1979) San Francisco: Manroot Press
Graffiti for the Johns of Heaven (1982) Mill Valley, CA: Syzygy Press Ecstasies (1983) Mill Valley, CA: Syzygy Press
A to Z: 26 Sermonettes (1986) Mill Valley, CA: Syzygy Press Hooplas (1988) San Francisco: Pennywhistle Press
75 Life Lines (1988) Winston-Salem, NC: Jargon Society Special Deliveries: Selected Poems (1990) Seattle, WA: Broken Moon Press
Coming Unbuttoned (1993) San Francisco: City Lights Press Little Sermons of the Big Joy (1994) Philadelphia, PA: Insight to Riot Press
Little Prayers to Big Joy's Mother (1995) Port Townsend, WA: Syzygy Press Packing Up for Paradise: Selected Poems 1946-1996 (1997) Santa Barbara, CA & Ann Arbor, MI: Black Sparrow Press ALL: A James Broughton Reader (2007) edited by Jack Foley, Brooklyn, NY: White Crane Books