James Broughton

James Broughton (November 10, 1913 – May 17, 1999) was an American poet, and poetic filmmaker. He 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.

Life
"The Selected Films of James Broughton" is a DVD compilation of seventeen films on 3 discs, released in 2006 by Facets Multimedia.

Life
Born to wealthy parents, he lost his father early to the 1918 influenza epidemic and spent the rest of his life getting over his high-strung, overbearing mother.

Before he was three, "Sunny Jim" experienced a transformational visit from his muse, Hermy, which he describes in his autobiography, Coming Unbuttoned (1993):

In the book, Broughton remarks on his love affairs with both men and women. Among his male lovers was gay activist Harry Hay.

He briefly lived with the film critic Pauline Kael and they had a daughter Gina, born in 1948.

Career
That meeting with "Hermy" prefigured the cavalcade of mystery, imagination, sexuality, danger, humor, and transformation that would mark the 23 books and 23 films Broughton produced in a life laced with travel, teaching, self-analysis, and rich and prickly friendships.

"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"

- "This is It"

His work is quintessentially Californian – exploring and engaging the polar frontiers of wildness and civility, male and female, body and spirit—with the crash of Pacific Ocean waves echoing throughout. "Ultimately I have learned more about poetry / from music and magic than from literature," he wrote.

Broughton was kicked out of military school for having an affair with a classmate, dropped out of Stanford before graduating, and 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.

"Cinema saved me from suicide when I was 32 by revealing to me a wondrous reality: the love between fellow artists," Broughton wrote. This theme carried him through his 85 years. "It was as important to live poetically as to write poems."

Despite many creative love affairs during the San Francisco Beat Scene, Broughton put off marriage until age 49, when, steeped in his explorations of Jungian psychology, he married Suzanna Hart in a three-day ceremony on the Pacific coast documented by his friend, the experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage. Suzanna’s theatrical background and personality made for a great playmate; they had two children. And they built a great community among the creative spirits of Alan Watts, Michael McClure, Anna Halprin, and Imogen Cunningham.

In 1967’s "summer of love," Broughton made a film, The Bed, a celebration of the dance of life which broke taboos against frontal nudity and won prizes at many film festivals. It rekindled Broughton’s filmmaking and led to more tributes to the human body (The Golden Positions), the eternal child (This Is It), the eternal return (The Water Circle), the eternal moment (High Kukus), and the eternal feminine (Dreamwood). "These eternalities praised the beauty of humans, the surprises of soul, and the necessity of merriment," Broughton wrote.

Indeed, Broughton repeatedly explored the temple of the human body – the "Godbody" – as a taproot for healing and peace, both for the individual and society.

"Come forth unabashed Come out unbuttoned Bury belligerence Resurrect frolic Only through body can you clasp the divine Only through body can you dance with the god In every man’s hand the gift of compassion In every man’s hand the beloved connection Trust one another or drown"

- "Shaman Psalm"

He developed a great 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.

Despite his poetic and cinematic explorations throughout his career, Broughton was drowning in his own unresolved mother-issues, which translated into impotence:

"Had my soul tottered off to sleep taking my potency with it? Had they both retired before I could leaving me a classroom somnambulist? Why else should I at sixty-one feel myself shriveling into fadeout?"

- "Wondrous The Merge"

As poet Jack Foley puts it in All: A James Broughton Reader, "In Broughton’s moment of need, Hermy appeared again in the person of a 25-year-old Canadian film student named Joel Singer:

"Then on a cold seminar Monday In walked an unannounced redeemer Disguised as a taciturn student Brisk and resolute in scruffy mufti He set down his backpack  shook his hair And offered me unequivocal devotion

He dismissed my rebuffs and ultimatums He scoffed at suggestions of disaster He insisted he had been given authority To provide my future happiness Was it possible he had been sent From some utopian headquarters?"

- "Wondrous The Merge"

Broughton’s meeting with Singer was a life-changing, life-determining moment 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''.

Life with Joel Singer
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), which takes delight in friendly things men can do together from the odd to the rapturous, and Scattered Remains (1988), a cheerfully death-obsessed tribute to Broughton’s poetry and filmmaking.

In fact, Broughton explored death deeply throughout his life. He died in May, 1999 with champagne on his lips, in the house in Port Townsend, Washington where he and Joel lived for 10 years. Before he died, he said, "My creeping decrepitude has crept me all the way to the crypt." His gravestone in a Port Townsend cemetery reads, "Adventure – not predicament."

Publications

 * Songs for Certain Children. San Francisco: Centaur Press, 1947.
 * The Playground. San Francisco: Centaur Press, 1949.
 * Musical Chairs.) San Francisco: Centaur Press, 1950.
 * An Almanac for Amorists. Paris: Collection Merlin, 1955.
 * True & False Unicorn. New York: Grove Press. 1957.
 * The Right Playmate. San Francisco: Pearce & Bennett, 1964.
 * Tidings. San Francisco: Pterodactyl Press, 1965.
 * High Kukus. New York: Jargon Society, 1969.
 * A Long Undressing. New York: Jargon Society, 1971.
 * Seeing the Light. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1977.
 * republished as Making Light of It, 1992.
 * Odes for Odd Occasions. San Francisco: Manroot Press, 1977.
 * The Androgyne Journal. Oakland, CA: Scrimshaw Press, 1977.
 * Hymns to Hermes. San Francisco: Manroot Press, 1977.


 * Graffiti for the Johns of Heaven. Mill Valley, CA: Syzygy Press, 1982.
 * Ecstasies. Mill Valley, CA: Syzygy Press, 1983.
 * A to Z: 26 Sermonettes. Mill Valley, CA: Syzygy Press, 1986.
 * Hooplas. San Francisco: Pennywhistle Press, 1988.
 * 75 Life Lines. Winston-Salem, NC: Jargon Society, 1988.
 * Special Deliveries: Selected Poems. Seattle, WA: Broken Moon Press, 1990.
 * Coming Unbuttoned. San Francisco: City Lights Press, 1993.
 * Little Sermons of the Big Joy. Philadelphia, PA: Insight to Riot Press, 1994.
 * Little Prayers to Big Joy's Mother. Port Townsend, WA: Syzygy Press, 1995.
 * Packing Up for Paradise: Selected Poems 1946-1996. Santa Barbara, CA & Ann Arbor, MI: Black Sparrow Press, 1997.
 * All: A James Broughton Reader (edited by Jack Foley). Brooklyn, NY: White Crane Books, 2007.

Film

 * Adventures of Jimmy (1950) 11 min 16 mm
 * The Bed (1968) 20 min 16 mm
 * Devotions (with Joel Singer) (1983) 22 min 16 mm
 * Dreamwood (1972) 45 min 16 mm
 * Erogeny (1976) 6 min 16 mm
 * Four in the Afternoon (1951) 15 min 16 mm
 * The Gardener of Eden (with Joel Singer) (1981) 8.5 min 16 mm
 * The Golden Positions (1970) 16 mm
 * Hermes Bird (1979) 11 min 16 mm
 * High Kukus (1973) 3 min 16 mm
 * Loony Tom, The Happy Lover (1951) 10.5 min 16 mm
 * Mother's Day (1948) 22 min 16 mm
 * Nuptiae (1969) 14 min 16 mm
 * The Pleasure Garden (1953) 38 min 16 mm
 * The Potted Psalm (with Sidney Peterson) (1946) 18 min
 * Scattered Remains (with Joel Singer) (1988) 14 min 16 mm
 * Shaman Psalm (with Joel Singer) (1981) 7 min 16 mm
 * Song of the Godbody (with Joel Singer) (1977) 11 min 16 mm
 * Testament (1974) 20 min 16 mm
 * This Is It (1971) 10 min 16 mm
 * Together (with Joel Singer) (1976) 3 min 16 mm
 * The Water Circle (1975) 3 min 16 mm
 * Windowmobile (with Joel Singer) (1977) 8 min 16 mm