A Toad's Favo(u)rite~Richard Brautigan

Cover of In Watermelon Sugar, by Richard Brautigan; my scan

Hello, toads and toadettes, hedgewitch here. It's my turn to provide a favourite poem/poet, and this time it will be 20th Century American poet and writer Richard Brautigan (1935-1984.) Almost all his poetry is quite short, so I've selected several examples.

Brautigan wrote during the middle to end of the Beat era and the full onslaught of the 60's counterculture years with black humor and directness. His bio page at Poets.org, puts it this way: "Although Brautigan, whose work largely defies classification, is not properly considered a Beat writer, he shared the Beats' aversion to middle class values, commercialism, and conformity."

Brautigan had a difficult life, and wasn't with us long, but his poetry and short novels--which to me are long prose-poems--remain full of wry acceptance, hope and a sense of the flashing, absolute clarity that comes and goes, but always leaves something we need behind. Many of his collected poems can be found in The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster, first published in 1968 and still in print. He may be best known for his novella Trout Fishing in America, but his short poetry has a sad, childlike and clean feel well worth a read or reread. 

For those who'd like more on Brautigan, an excellent archive of facts, sidenotes and details as well as a bibliography of all his published works can be found at brautigan.net.

Cover art via wikipedia

Below are a few examples that are among my favourite poems:

Karma Repair Kit, Items 1-4

1.
Get enough food to eat,
and eat it.


2.
Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,
and sleep there.


3.
Reduce intellectual and emotional noise
until you arrive at the silence of yourself,
and listen to it. 

4.

© Copyright 1967 by Richard Brautigan,

from  All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace
"Permission is granted to reprint any of these poems in magazines,
books and newspapers if they are given away free. " per brautigan.net

Hinged to Forgetfulness Like a Door

Hinged to forgetfulness
like a door,
she slowly closed out of
sight,
and she was the woman I loved,
but too many times she slept like
a mechanical deer in my caresses,
and I ached in the metal silence
of her dreams. 

 

© joyannjones

It was Your Idea to go to Bed with Her

Snowflaked as if by an invisible polar bear
---unlucky bastard,
you're sitting on the fender of her kisses
while she drives the car down into the
perfect center of ice.

~ both © 1970 by Richard Brautigan, from my purchased copy of Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt, Dell Publishing Co. Inc.

Lastly, for our resident victim of extreme haiku aversion--we all know who she is--I've included this one:

Haiku Ambulance


A piece of green pepper

   fell

off the wooden salad bowl:

   so what?

© Richard Brautigan, from The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster.

Finally, for those who like the spoken word, here's a video set to Brautigan reading one of his poems, Gee You're So Beautiful It's Starting To Rain:

All poems and photographs reproduced in accordance with Fair Use principles.