"The Winos On Potrero Hill" and more (a poetic treat)

For my birthday, my parents got me a really cool book - a book of some of the best poets since the 1900's, with a CD of some of the poets reading their own work. It's really cool to hear the actual voices of largely influential literary figures such as e e cummings, William Carlos Williams, and Sylvia Plath (these are some of my favorites). Yet, one poet who is left out of every anthology I have ever read (and I've read quite a few), is left out of this one, as well: Richard Brautigan.

I've mentioned him here a time or two before (and I have one reader who I know shares my love for this writer), but it's time to mention him and his work again. Most of his poems are short, to the point, yet highly metaphoric. Of all the books on my shelf, his collection (which is just one of many) The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, published in 1968, is my favorite book to read. To me, Brautigan captures the essence of California in the 1960's - the beautiful parts of the counterculture movement. Of course, I was not alive then, so this may or may not be an accurate imagination. Sadly, like too many other great artists, Brautigan committed suicide in 1984.

Some poems from the above-mentioned book (Blogger won't let me do the correct line spaces for some of these, so my apologies):

"The Winos on Potrero Hill"

Alas, they get
their bottles
from a small
neighborhood store.
The old Russian
sells them port
and passes no moral
judgment. They go
and sit under
the green bushes
that grow along
the wooden stairs.
They could almost
be exotic flowers,
they drink so
quietly.


"'Star-Spangled' Nails"

You've got
some "Star-Spangled"
nails
in your coffin, kid.
That's what
they've done for you,
son.


"I Feel Horrible. She Doesn't"

I feel horrible. She doesn't
love me and I wander around
this house like a sewing machine
that's just finished sewing
a turd to a garbage can lid.


"Our Beautiful West Coast Thing"

We are a coast people
There is nothing but ocean out beyond us.
-Jack Spicer

I sit here dreaming
long thoughts of California

at the end of a November day
below a cloudy twilight
near the Pacific

listening to the The Mamas and The Papas
THEY'RE GREAT

singing a song about breaking
somebody's heart and digging it!

I think I'll get up
and dance around the room.

Here I go!