In reading the material for this class in particular, I keep wondering how much influence drugs have on the poems and such. I'm pretty sure this Brautigan guy was doing more than just experimenting with drugs. So how much of what he says is coherent? Does it matter if what he says is or isn't? Should art be made in the clearest, soberest mental state or do drugs help? All these questions flood through my mind, and I don't really have an answer. I definitely think drugs shape a lot of cultural movements and art. San Francisco especially has been shaped by drug culture. Also, think of all the songs by the Doors, the Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, etc. Definitely fueled by drugs and those songs are great! So should I devalue Brautigan's poetry in my head because it seems senseless?
While I actually liked some of Brautigan's poetry, I just feel like there's a lot more behind what poetry gets published and can't help but thinking of all the great stuff that doesn't for one reason or another. There's some level of corporate bureaucracy involved even in the publishing of poetry.
My most favorite aspect of Brautigan's poetry in The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, is the natural way he speaks. Especially his poems about love and women seem very real to me. "The Beautiful Poem," while to some could seem vulgar, seems like a very real, raw emotion to me. "I go to bed in Los Angeles thinking about you./Pissing a few moments ago/I looked down at my penis affectionately./Knowing it has been inside you twice today makes me feel beautiful." That's more real to me than some overly romantic and figurative poem about the grandeur of love. Love can be expressed as simply as Brautigan does in "The Beautiful Poem."
Brautigan does get a little more metaphorical in his love poems such as "Discovery" when he writes "The petals of the vagina unfold like Christopher Columbus taking off his shoes./Is there anything more beautiful than the bow of a ship touching a new world?". Even this seems simple and pure to me. He seems to be rejoicing in the power of love and sex, yet I still get a free love/hippie feel from him as well. He keeps referring to his feelings of love and sex as "beautiful" embracing and revering these things in a way that I really like. He makes it real to me. Whoever Marcia was seems to really have made an impact on him and he expresses it nicely in his poetry.
Then Brautigan goes on to write something like "Xerox Candy Bar" (11) and I go back to thinking, "what the fuck?"
2 comments:
Allison, I was so excited by all your thoughts on Brautigan poetry.
A lot of art has that "why is that famous?" quality to it. A lot of very famous paintings look like something a five year old can do, and what it really comes down to is publicity and marketing. However, in the case of Brautigan, I feel like his work does process something unique... have you ever tried to write poetry that was so utterly random and playful, while often maintaining a point? He lets go of the rules and isn't limited by our formalized idea of poetry. Forget the rules.
As for his use of drugs, while being part of that movement he was without a doubt involved, but I suspect that his poetry would have been sporadic regardless. In any case, the advantages to the use of drugs, particularly in psychedelics, is putting yourself in an abnormal mindset without the usual sense of self editing and limits... much like the unrestrained writing of Brautigan.
I relate to your feeling that its impossible to truly critique poetry. I mean if there were a pannel of judges, preferably olympic style, and the poet had to read his or her poem in front of the world im sure that the scorecards would range from three to nine-point-nine. I remember in early creative writing classes the poetry people would bring their haiku poems into workshops and nobody could truly critique structure, punctuation, etc. On the other hand the fiction writers always got judged on grammar, character, arch, dialogue, intro, setting, blah-blah-blah.
However whenever I hear a great poem I usually know it instantly. As far as the drug thing goes all I can really ask is for you to imagine all the film, literature, music, and I hate to say it but questions hadnt arisen without the use of intoxicants albeit alcohol or LSD. Dont get all equilibrium about it-imagine that.
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