Loading Mercury With A Pitchfork (edition 1976)

A collection of poetry from the early 1970's. I love this stuff. Haiku-like, along with silliness and sadness. It isn't quite as good as his two books of 1960's poetry (The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster and Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt), although the style is more unified and confident. ( )

Brautigan's third book of poems is strangely forgotten (well, his entire existence has practically been forgotten) behind Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt and especially the Pill, but for no reason I can see. It's just about as good as those two. (I forgot: It's out...of......print. Reprint it you ****s!) Brautigan introduced me--least outside of school--to the world of poetry only 5 or 6 months ago, a world I got completely addicted to not even 2 months ago, and I really have ol' Dick to thank, after I read rough old copies of Trout Fishing and Watermelon Sugar allowing me to get warmed up to his already very poetic prose (which I sometimes think contains more poetry than his actual poems) I picked up the Pill and had mixed feelings on it. Sometimes I'd read a poem and think "My gawd, that was ****ing dreadful" and vicie versie; mostly I felt disappointed. But daze passed and I couldn't get those suckers out of my head, and pretty soon warmed up and smiled even reading lines I before thought couldn't get any worse

Brautigan, I and every reader should notice, loves to include a hefty amount of metaphysical conceits. I have no idea if they ever actually mean a damn thing but feel the need to wipe my eyes anyway and announce to the world that whatever the hell I just read is beauty.

"Crow Maiden"

And you will go where crows go
and you will know what crows know

After you have learned all their secrets
and think the way they do and your love
caresses their feathers like the walls
of a midnight clock, they will fly away
and take you with them.

And you will go where crows go
and you will know what crows know.

Walls of a midnight clock being carressed by love? Wha?....I think Brautigan is the only hepcat poet who could have gotten away with poems like "Postcard," "It's Time to Train Yourself," "They Are Really Having Fun," etcetcetcetcetc. Even the simplest of poems (and they are all simple--typical of Brautigan there are only a couple short lines to each page; you could read all 127 pages in 15 or 20 minutes without missin' much) has that distinctive Brautigan flavor to it. Example!:

Two guys get out of a car.
They stand beside it. They
don't know what else to do.

The second line is a pretty good give-away that we're dealing with Brautigan here, but that third...no doubt can be had. Solemn beauty (don't ask my why/how--5 months ago I would have coughed up tea and called that poem complete rubbish....Boy...Brautigan grows on ya) like that can only come from him.

F.V.: 75%

Nobody knows what the experience is worth
but it's better than sitting on your hands,
I keep telling myself

[Time of review: 58 users] ( )