Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster (original 1968; edition 1969)

I read this book again today after more than a thirty year distance from the last time we visited. Not so hotsy totsy. But it was "ok". Unfortunately, by reading this a second time around old Richard lost a star in my ranking. I think his novels will hold up better. ( )

This rating doesn't really give this collection of poems true justice or capture the heart of the matter...some of them are just brilliant-"Death is a Beautiful Car Parked Only," "Insane Asylum" (esp. pt.8), "The Symbol" "In a Cafe," and my very favorite "Cyclops" Some of them are more short prose or passing thoughts vs. poems and others of them are glimpses at women more than anything else. But, for as many beautiful brilliant poems there are, there are also some inane ones that bring the collection down as a whole. There is a triteness and commonplace sense that some may find innocent and sweet but I can't help but feel is boring and that is unfortunate considering the brilliance the man was capable of. It's like in the lesser poems, Brautigan wasn't inspired or even trying, which is really frustrating.

In any case, here are some examples of great quotes:


pg. 50

Cyclops
A glass of lemonade
travels across this world
like the eye of the cyclops

If a child doesn't drink
the lemonade,
Ulysses will.

pg. 59

and Baudelaire
laughed when the
insane asylum
rubbed itself
up against his
leg like a
strange cat



pg. 88 "They would have have lived
happily ever after
if the horse hadn't had
a flat tire
in front of a dragon's house."

pg. 95 "Do you like being a truckdriver better than you do a whale?" I asked.
"Yeah," Moby Dick said. "Hoffa is a lot better to us whales than Captain Ahab ever was."

[g. 107 "I watched a man in a cafe fold a slice of bread as if he were folding a birth certificate of looking at the photograph of a dead lover."



( )

A really odd random find from my local used bookstore COAS. It's like Zen Americana. ( )

His poems are like his prose and I mean that in the best possible way. ( )

Picked this up at a Friends of the Library used book sale. Vaguely recognized his name and some of the other works mentioned on the back, and really liked what I saw on first flip-through. Read it in one sitting the next day. Fun stuff. A little less so once I read his Wikipedia bio, but still. Particularly liked the Baudelaire series. And the Alaska refs, because I'm from there. ( )