The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster

I was a huge Richard Brautigan fan in my early 20s and I spent many rainy days haunting the used bookstores of the Pacific Northwest looking for any of his books I might of missed. Come to think of it, I still can’t imagine a better way to spend a rainy day at any age. As anyone who has read at least one Brautigan can tell you, he can be fantastically whimsical, childishly naïve, brilliantly insightful, and seriously depressed; sometimes all at once.

While some of Brautigan’s poetry reads very much like a product of its time (1957-68), it’s also quite often outside of time—almost Zen in its simplicity and directness. As I’ve gotten older I had almost let slip the sublime memory of giving a copy of Your Catfish Friend to a girl show more I figured needed to read it. I remember thinking that Brautigan had captured exactly how I felt and that he must have written the poem just to give me the words to express myself at that moment. Sadly, I don’t recall it having any great effect, which may have had something to do with why he was chronically bummed out.

It’s a small step from recognizing the potential power of the right words and a little insight in someone else’s work and trying your own hand at writing. I can blame Brautigan as much as anyone for giving me the idea that I could write poetry, kind of the same influence that Mike Watt would have on my music a little later on.

Start your own band. Write your own poem. Be someone’s catfish friend. show less

I just read this book on a whim because a copy of it came into my Little Free Library. I have another copy of this book I've saved since December, 1970. I remembered one poem, "It's Raining in Love", which I've always liked very much. I had been such a big Richard Brautigan fan "back in the day", but I haven't read any of his work for quite a long time. In this book, some of the poems I didn't care for, some were absurd, and some were so funny they made me laugh out loud. I think I'll save my original copy of this book for another fifty years! :D

Here are the poems I liked best, but you have to get the book yourself in order to read them:

Love Poem (true)
"Star-Spangled" Nails (sad)
Haiku Ambulance (weird)
I Feel Horrible. She Doesn't (made show more me laugh)
It's Raining in Love (so sweet)
November 3 (funny)
Your Catfish Friend (nice) show less

Brautigan is all over the place here in theme, style, and length in a way that probably only he could pull off. A favorite of mine below...

Comets

There are comets
that flash through
our mouths wearing
the grace
of oceans and galaxies.

   God knows,
   we try to do the best
   we can.

There are comets
connected to chemicals
that telescope
down our tongues
to burn out against
the air.

   I know
   we do.

There are comets
that laugh at us
from behind our teeth
wearing the clothes
of fish and birds.

   We try.

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, show more 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." show less

Another catchy title. Now I think I really will read something by him again. I breezed thru most of his writings & then moved on into adulthood - leaving Brautigan behind in the dust. Is that why he killed himself? Did he get unfairly 'out-moded'?

5am, Saturday, Aug 21, 2021. I awoke with the phrase "machines of loving grace" in my mind, and it wouldn't let go. Then it became "all watched over by machines of loving grace". I couldn't remember where this came from, so, fire up my bedside iPad and dig a bit. It turns out to be the title of a 1967 Brautigan poem! It later appeared in this book "The Pill vs..." which I know I read way back then (probably in the 1970's). I loved Brautigan for the ways he freed my mind to words playing together in new ways. I had several of his books in my library for decades, but I'm afraid I've given them away in the course of our life-style downsizing. In any case, fond memories arise. And I enjoyed reading that poem again "All Watched Over by show more Machines of Loving Grace". I see there's even a rock band today, carrying the name "Machines of Loving Grace". I haven't heard them... show less

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.