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by Gerald Locklin
Richard Brautigan carries the notion of occasional verse to an extreme. Practically anything may constitute for him the occasion for a poem. Sometimes either the subject just isn't there, or else his unique metaphorical apparatus is not working, or both, as in these examples:
BIG DIPPER
This is the biggest Big Dipper
that I've ever seen.
NINE CROWS: TWO OUT OF SEQUENCE
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 6, 8, 9
NIGHT
Night again
again night
This is the biggest Big Dipper
that I've ever seen.
NINE CROWS: TWO OUT OF SEQUENCE
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 6, 8, 9
NIGHT
Night again
again night
On the other hand, when subject and imagination coincide, the poem that results is one that no one but Brautigan could have conceived:
^IMPASSE
I talked a good hello
but she talked an even
better good-bye.
THE BOTTLE
A child stands motionless.
He holds a bottle in his hands.
There's a ship in the bottle.
He stares at it with eyes
that do not blink.
He wonders where a tiny ship
can sail if it is held
prisoner in a bottle.
Fifty years from now you will
find out, Captain Martin,
for the sea (large as it is)
is only another bottle.^
As in Brautigan's Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster and Rommel Drives On Deep into Egypt, there is much that is flat and ordinary in this book, but, when one has just about given up, there is the flash of life, of wit. No matter: how many great poems did Donne, Keats, and Arnold write? And, at their best, his novels shine forth poetry as well.
Independent Press-Telegram?
August 1, 1976: L6
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