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 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.
I don't know what it is,
but I distrust myself
when I start to like a girl
a lot.
It makes me nervous.
I don't say the right things
or perhaps I start
to examine,
evaluate,
compute
what I am saying.
If I say, "Do you think it's going to rain?"
and she says, "I don't know,"
I start thinking : Does she really like me?
In other words
I get a little creepy.
A friend of mine once said,
"It's twenty times better to be friends
with someone
than it is to be in love with them."
I think he's right and besides,
it's raining somewhere, programming flowers
and keeping snails happy.
That's all taken care of.
BUT
if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like,
"Do you think it's going to rain?"
and I say, "It beats me,"
and she says, "Oh,"
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky,
I think : Thank God, it's you, baby, this time
instead of me.
I know that’s a mouthful and a lot vary. So if any of the above are your favs (I know I might get some hate for some of them) but who else really had a lasting affect on you? I feel like my taste in poetry is really specific and some are considered distasteful, (besides Mary Oliver) but they are my favorites and I struggle to find similar.
I know some of the above are also singers but their poetry is my favorite.
Feel free to recommend a specific poem or to leave an example! Or to share what about them is similar in their writing style.
Ted Brautigan (fictional Hearts in Atlantis) appears inspired by Richard Brautigan (american writer). Hearts in Atlantis is all about the baby boomer generation and Richard Brautigan who write In Watermelon Sugar wrote very much about the baby boomer experience. What do you think? It probably doesnt hurt that if you google Brautigan that Richard Brautigan pops up. We know many of Stephen King’s characters are inspired by real people... ie Roland was a general in history, Odetta Holmes was a singer and civil rights activist. Wavy Gravy was mentioned in Hearts in Atlantis and Captain Trips is named after a real person.
I gave a girl my soul.
She looked at it.
Smiled faintly.
And dropped it into the gutter.
Casually.
God! She had class.
Oh, how perfect death
computes an orange wind
that glows from your footsteps
and you stop to die in
an orchard where the harvest
fills the stars.
From THE LAST YEAR THE TROUT CAME UP HAYMAN CREEK:
Charles Hayman, a sort of half-assed pioneer in a country that not many wanted to live in because it was poor and ugly and horrible, He built a shack, this was in 1876, on a little creek that drained a worthless hill. After a while the creek was called Hayman Creek. Mr. Hayman did not know how to read or write and considered himself better for it. Mr. Hayman did odd jobs for years and years and years and years. Your mule's broke? Get Mr. Hayman to fix it. Your fences are on fire? Get Mr. Hayman to put them out. Mr.- Hayman lived on a diet of stone-ground wheat and kale. He bought the wheat by the hundred-pound sack and ground it himself with a mortar and pestle. He grew the kale in front of his shack and tended the kale as if it were prize winning orchids.
I feel horrible. She doesn’t love me and I wander around the house like a sewing machine that’s just finished sewing a turd to a garbage can lid.
It's so nice
to wake up in the morning
all alone
and not have to tell somebody
you love them
when you don't love them
any more.
This book is so funny that I find myself laughing out loud every few pages. Brautigan's voice comes through so clearly. Of someone he describes as a "Kool-Aid wino," he says:
“You’re supposed to make only two quarts of Kool-Aid from a package, but he always made a gallon, so his Kool-Aid was a mere shadow of its desired potency. And you’re supposed to add a cup of sugar to every package of Kool-Aid, but he never put any sugar in his Kool-Aid because there wasn’t any sugar to put in it.
He created his own Kool-Aid reality and was able to illuminate himself by it.”
Describing a hot day, he says:
“The sun was like a huge fifty-cent piece that someone had poured kerosene on and then had lit with a match and said, 'Here, hold this while I go get a newspaper,' and put the coin in my hand, but never came back.”
What a brilliant writer.
O beautiful
was the werewolf
in his evil forest.
We took him
to the carnival
and he started
crying
when he saw
the Ferris wheel.
Electric
green and red tears
flowed down
his furry cheeks.
He looked
like a boat
out on the dark
water.
I picked up his book Sombrero Fallout roughly 6 months ago and I didn’t read it till a few weeks ago when chance happened so I was in the right mood and just picked it up off my shelf and began to read it.
I finished it in 2 days and 2 sittings.
It was funny and somehow soo stupid and brilliant while staying somewhat grounded in some sort of emotional truth.
I am now A Confederate General from Big Sur and am really enjoying it, the funny thing is, I’m 16 and have only just started diverging from Sci-fi and Fantasy genre fiction to start reading Literature and other types of fiction and so I’m not able to read into these books that much and don’t understand the majority of the references. But I still enjoy them.
I’d love to discuss Sombrero Fallout and A Confederate General from Big Sur with anyone that has read them in the comments I am just soo mystified as to why I like them.
Now it's Richard Boughtagain
I’ll talk to you about things,
And I’ll make you smile
and giggle and laugh
like a little kid.
I’ll point out things for you
to look at.
Maybe I’ll stop and kiss you
right out in front of everybody.
I won’t give a damn either
because I love you
more than a mountain
I used to know.
I read "The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966" by Richard Brautigan at far too young an age. One line stuck with me, though:
> "The author was a girl about twelve years old, just entering into puberty. She had lemon-sized breasts against a green sweater. She was awakening to adolescence in a delightful way".
This stuck with me for a lot of reasons. I felt uncomfortable that a grown man would take sexual delight in someone who was only 12 years old. That's about how old I was when I read the book, and I was already feeling men's eyes on me in possessive and intrusive ways. This was emphasis that it was a common, accepted, acceptable thing. The description of her breasts, the size and shape, what was normal and desirable for a 12 year old stuck with me, too. I didn't have breasts like that. I have never had breasts like that. Did that mean I was performing 12 year old femininity wrong? Am I performing femininity wrong even now? Did/do men judge me on the shape and size of my boobs? This is a girl just trying to do something, a minor thing in her every day life, and this dude has to take time out to marvel at her boobs. She's not just a girl, she's a girl entering puberty. She's not just wearing a green sweater, she's wearing a green sweater over boobs.
The protagonist falls in love with a woman so smoking hot that a driver crashes a car and dies because he's busy ogling her bazonkahonkers. She's so beautiful it causes her problems in her every day life. She hates her body. She's ashamed of it and her enormo chachas. The protagonist sexes her up real good and helps her fall in love with her body again and she ultimately winds up supporting him by working at a topless bar, which is empowering, and she no longer hates her body and loves to have people look at bazoomers. I don't remember much else about her other than that she's smokin' hot, has big tiddywinkles, and cries because she's sad at how hot she is, then gets a job at a topless bar and loves it. I think she has a sister? That's about it.
OTOH, the abortion is treated as a necessary medical procedure and it was ridiculous it was illegal in the USA so that's deffo shaped some of my politics. All in all, kind of a mixed bag.
I absolutely LOVE Richard Brautigan he is my favourite author of all time. I have never found anyone who is similar to him, or who even comes close.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
My favourite books of his are: Sombrero Fallout, Willard & his Bowling Trophies, and Revenge of the Lawn.
Sometimes life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee
affords. I once read something about coffee. The thing said that coffee is good for you;
it stimulates all the organs.
I thought at first this was a strange way to put it, and not altogether pleasant, but
as time goes by I have found out that it makes sense in its own limited way. I'll tell you
what I mean.
Yesterday morning I went over to see a girl. I like her. Whatever we had going for us
is gone now. She does not care for me. I blew it and wish I hadn't.
I rang the door bell and waited on the stairs. I could hear her moving around upstairs.
The way she moved I could tell that she was getting up. I had awakened her.
Then she came down the stairs. I could feel her approach in my stomach. Every step she
took stirred my feelings and lead indirectly to her opening the door. She saw me and it
did not please her.
Once upon a time it pleased her very much, last week. I wonder where it went,
pretending to be naive.
"I feel strange now," she said. "I don't want to talk."
"I want a cup of coffee," I said, because it was the last thing in the world
that I wanted. I said it in such a way that it sounded as if I were reading her a telegram
from somebody else, a person who really wanted a cup of coffee, who cared about nothing
else.
"All right," she said.
I followed her up the stairs. It was ridiculous. She had just put some clothes on. They
had not quite adjusted themselves to her body. I could tell you about her ass. We went
into the kitchen.
She took a jar of instant coffee off the shelf and put it on the table. She placed a
cup next to it, and a spoon. I looked at them. She put a pan full of water on the stove
and turned the gas on under it.
All this time she did not say a word. Her clothes adjusted themselves to her body. I
won't. She left the kitchen.
Then she went down the stairs and outside to see if she had any mail. I didn't remember
seeing any. She came back up the stairs and went into another room. She closed the door
after her. I looked at the pan full of water on the stove.
I knew that it would take a year before the water started to boil. It was now October
and there was too much water in the pan. That was the problem. I threw half of the water
into the sink.
The water would boil faster now. It would take only six months. The house was quiet.
I looked out the back porch. There were sacks of garbage th
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
I like to think (and the sooner the better!) of a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky.
I like to think (right now, please!) of a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics where deer stroll peacefully past computers as if they were flowers with spinning blossoms.
I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace.
I've seen in multiple places that Murakami has cited the late-American author Richard Brautigan as an influence, but it wasn't until I read his collection of vignettes The Tokyo-Montana Express that I realized how similar the writing is. I suggest you check out this book if you can. It's quite short and reminds me of Murakami's short stories, except most of the vignettes are shorter.
"A sombrero fell out of the sky and landed on the Main Street of town in front of the mayor, his cousin and a person out of work. The day was scrubbed clean by the desert air. The sky was blue. It was the blue of human eye, waiting for something to happen. There was no reason for a sombrero to fall out of the sky. No airplane or helicopter was passing overhead and it was not a religious holiday."
The first tear formed itself in his right eye. That was the eye that always started crying first. Then the left followed. He would have found it interesting of he had known that the right eye started crying first. The left eye started crying so close after the right eye that he didn't know which eye started crying first, but it was always the right one.
He was very perceptive but he wasn't perceptive enough to know which eye started crying first. That is, if one can * use such a small piece of information as any kind of definition of perception.
I saw thousands of pumpkins last night
come floating in on the tide,
bumping up against the rocks and
rolling up on the beaches;
it must be Halloween in the sea.
I really enjoy these poets and would like to know anyone similar. Not a hybrid of all three just 1 or 2 poets similar to each.
I was trying to describe you to someone a few days ago. You don’t look like any girl I’ve ever seen before.
I couldn’t say “Well she looks just like Jane Fonda, except that she’s got red hair, and her mouth is different and of course, she’s not a movie star…”
I couldn’t say that because you don’t look like Jane Fonda at all.
I finally ended up describing you as a movie I saw when I was a child in Tacoma Washington. I guess I saw it in 1941 or 42, somewhere in there. I think I was seven, or eight, or six. It was a movie about rural electrification, a perfect 1930’s New Deal morality kind of movie to show kids.
The movie was about farmers living in the country without electricity. They had to use lanterns to see by at night, for sewing and reading, and they didn’t have any appliances like toasters or washing machines, and they couldn’t listen to the radio.
Then they built a dam with big electric generators and they put poles across the countryside and strung wire over fields and pastures.
There was an incredible heroic dimension that came from the simple putting up of poles for the wires to travel along. They looked ancient and modern at the same time.
Then the movie showed electricity like a young Greek god, coming to the farmer to take away forever the dark ways of his life. Suddenly, religiously, with the throwing of a switch, the farmer had electric lights to see by when he milked his cows in the early black winter mornings.
The farmer’s family got to listen to the radio and have a toaster and lots of bright lights to sew dresses and read the newspaper by. It was really a fantastic movie and excited me like listening to the Star Spangled Banner, or seeing photographs of President Roosevelt, or hearing him on the radio “… the President of the United States… “
I wanted electricity to go everywhere in the world. I wanted all the farmers in the world to be able to listen to President Roosevelt on the radio.
And that’s how you look to me.
This would be my first novel by him after reading some of his poetry work. Probably gonna end up reading both, but for the time being i only can afford one.
Suggest me please .
"the eternal she" By Richard brautigan.
I gave a girl my soul.
She looked at it.
Smiled faintly.
And dropped it into the gutter.
Casually.
God! she had class.
It's so nice
to wake up in the morning
all alone
and not have to tell somebody
you love them
when you don't love them
any more.
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 bird.
We try.
O beautiful
was the werewolf
in his evil forest.
We took him
to the carnival
and he started
crying
when he saw
the Ferris wheel.
Electric
green and red tears
flowed down
his furry cheeks.
He looked
like a boat
out on the dark
water.
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
