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by Dennis Petticoffer
Brautigan insists that this is a "different" collection of poetry. Written in diary form, it contains impressions of his seven-week tour of Japan in 1976. There are poems about kimonos and kits, black jade and broken clocks; there are odes to cats, roosters, and flies; there are endless lines in praise of Japanese women. Taken individually, many of these poems do not hold up well. Brautigan himself concedes that the collection is "uneven." Taken together, it portrays a mood of alienation and loneliness, as might be expected when a poet finds himself immersed in an alien culture, unable to communicate with, or be understood by, the world around him. But "Japan" is not necessarily on the other side of the world — it can be just across the street. The book's prime appeal will be to college audiences, but it may prove less enticing than Brautigan's earlier works.
Library Journal 103(4)
February 15, 1978: 465
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