On Fish, Frightened Ants, and Frankenstein

 [Part Two of My Reading Life: Richard Brautigan]

This past year, I gave a Richard Brautigan poem to my juniors as part of their midterm, and asked them some simple analysis questions.  I already knew the poem, and it was also on the Poetry 180 website, giving it credence to use with high school students.

Gee, You're so Beautiful That It's Starting to Rain

Oh, Marcia,
I want your long blonde beauty
to be taught in high school,
so kids will learn that God
lives like music in the skin
and sounds like a sunshine harpsichord.
I want high school report cards
   to look like this:

Playing with Gentle Glass Things
   A
Computer Magic
   A
Writing Letters to Those You Love
   A
Finding out about Fish
   A
Marcia's Long Blonde Beauty
   A+!

Brautigan is associated with the Beat poets -- Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, and the like -- who were breaking the rules of poetry.  Even still, plenty of poetic devices are evident in many of his poems.

This is one of his more "Beat" style poems, always a favorite of mine:

The Alarm-Colored Shadow of a Frightened Ant

The alarm-colored shadow of a frightened ant
wants to make friends with you, learn all about 
your childhood, cry together, come live with 
    you.

So much longing.  As a young adult, a poem like this would grab a hold of me and not let go.  I think for a time I even had it memorized.

Brautigan can do that to a person.

After writing about Brautigan yesterday, my friend Sara sent me this  poem, which I was only vaguely familiar with. She said she had it taped in her high school locker when she was a student.  It is a real high school poem, to be sure:

Your Catfish Friend

My Brautigan poetry collections

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, "It's beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,"
I'd love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, "I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond?It seems like
a perfect place for them."

Again with the loneliness and the excruciating desire to belong! I definitely think that is going to be a good one for middle-schoolers.

Brautigan would sometimes weigh in on historical events and literature.  Here are a couple of poems in that vein:

Jules Verne Zucchini

Men are walking on the moon today,

planting their footsteps as if they were

   zucchini on a dead world

while over 3,000,000 people starve to death

   every year on a living one.

Earth

July 20 1969

Formal Portrait

I like to think of Frankenstein as a huge keyhole

and the laboratory as the key that turns the lock

and everything that happens afterward as just the

   lock turning.

I especially like the Frankenstein poem, because it plays a game with my mind.  

One correction I need to make from my blog yesterday -- I discovered Brautigan in 1976, not 1979.  I remembered a night hanging out with my friends Cathy and Kim, after playing cards for several hours, drinking beer and eating Fritos, we passed around the Brautigan poetry books and read the poems out loud to each other.  Previously, I had read them my favorite chapter from the novel (more like what is now called "linked stories") -- Trout Fishing in America.

The chapter is called "Trout Fishing in America Terrorists" and it is a sweet story about sixth graders so bored at recess that they start writing "Trout Fishing in America" on the backs of the first graders.  The chapter takes us through the boys having to go to the principal's office and how he brilliantly handled them.  It is my favorite chapter because it is so human and so evoking of the experience of getting in trouble in school.  Soon afterward, I think for my birthday, my friends gifted me with this shirt:

It doesn't fit me any more, but it resides in my memory box, as my Brautigan books sit together on my bookshelf, always there to remind me the author that challenged my mind and heart with language when I was a young adult.

P.S. I didn't hear about it at the time, but Brautigan took his own life in 1984.  I suppose by reading some of these poems, one might think "no wonder."  But, of course, we never know why anyone does themself in that way.  I can only have compassion and gratitude for his gifts to the literary world. I am well aware he joined the legions of artists who have done the same.

Godspeed, Richard.

All poems copyright Richard Brautigan.