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250th out of 383 books
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159 voters
Rommel Drives On Deep Into Egypt
84 pages
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I love that my bookshelves are a veritable treasure trove patiently--very patiently--awaiting my attention. Case in point: 5 Richard Brautigan books that I took from my parents' shelves, I am unsure whether it was with or without permisssion, sometime at least 8 years ago or longer. They have dutifully persevered through at least 6 moves and have become such a fixture on my shelves that up until recently my eyes generally glazed over the "BR" section. No more! Their voices started piping up a fe...more
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Richard Brautigan comes off like a cool poet, so you like him because he is cool, not because his poems are very good. That's also kind of how I feel about Frank O'Hara's Lunch Poems, which I was keeping in my backpack for a while just because it's nice to have a pocket book of poems to read during lunch break. This particular collection of short poems by Brautigan is nice to read if you're feeling kind of arrogant and alone and whatever, like if your air is cool enough that if you jot down a br...more
these tiny one-two sentence poems are kind of like deep thoughts by that snl person. jack something? i read the whole book on the bus ride to work. the twenty minute bus ride. they made me mad mostly, but sometimes something was cute. yes, cute. in that terribly sexist, old-salacious-poet-man way that can, sometimes, irritatingly, be bumbling in the poor little puppy way. cute poetry is kind-of gross, really. like, not playful or coy or, yes, marvin bell, charming, but cute and bite-sized and ma...more
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It has been a long time since I have read a book of poetry (actually, any literature) that has inspired me to pick up writing again, but Rommel Drives On Deep Into Egypt does just this.
Brautigan's collection is quirky - many of the poems are only a sentence and a few not even that, just a headline (i.e. "1891-1944" atop a blank page.) They remind me of gems mined from a diligently kept journal - an odd assortment of musings, jokes and insights mixed in with a few more traditionally formatted poe...more
Brautigan's collection is quirky - many of the poems are only a sentence and a few not even that, just a headline (i.e. "1891-1944" atop a blank page.) They remind me of gems mined from a diligently kept journal - an odd assortment of musings, jokes and insights mixed in with a few more traditionally formatted poe...more
Firstly, I love Richard Brautigan. I love everything Richard Brautigan ever did, including Rommel. That being said, I didn't love it as much as I enjoyed The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, another collection of his poetry. A lot of the poems in Rommel seemed hastily written down, often (as the writer says in the poem) because someone asked him to "write a poem about me." This made some of the poems magical and some of them only so-so. I still give him 5 stars for his incredible metaph...more
Generally on the fence with him, and then I get to one or two poems and it's decided:
The Moon Versus Us Ever Sleeping Together Again
I sit here, an arch-villain of romance,
thinking about you. Gee, I'm sorry
I made you unhappy, but there was nothing
I could do about it because I have to be free.
Perhaps everything would have been different
if you had stayed at the table or asked me
to go out with you to look at the moon,
instead of getting up and leaving me alone with
her.
The Moon Versus Us Ever Sleeping Together Again
I sit here, an arch-villain of romance,
thinking about you. Gee, I'm sorry
I made you unhappy, but there was nothing
I could do about it because I have to be free.
Perhaps everything would have been different
if you had stayed at the table or asked me
to go out with you to look at the moon,
instead of getting up and leaving me alone with
her.
this is a tidy and pleasant collection of 'pops' as jack kerouac would call them. little come-and-go images springing to life for a moment, or, more exact for brautigan, a thought, or a moment of thought if you will. definitely does the trick. although i don't think i would want to date him, his view of relationships seems more lyrical than bukowski's but just about as much...um...you know...but since i am just reading the man's poems, luckily indeed i do not have to date him.
Sep 10, 2012
Sue
added it
i think that brautigan was on lsd in the 60's. this was crap. i read some of the "poems" to my daughter who has a degree in writing with a concentration on poetry - and she agreed. a couple of the poems are titles only with blank pages - what talent. don't bother picking it up you will be disappointed (unless you like wasting your time!)
UGH.
Brautigan once "meant" a whole lot to me. Then I graduated high school.
I knew what I was getting into when I picked this book up used for $3 last summer. Nonetheless I was interested in seeing how I would "read" him now in relation to when I was younger.
I'm comfortable in positing that Brautigan's poetry suffers from Bukowski syndrom: moments of genuine allure lost in a plethora of absolute muted monotony and (hippy) phallocentrism. I mean poems like "Nice Ass" and "All girls should have a...more
Brautigan once "meant" a whole lot to me. Then I graduated high school.
I knew what I was getting into when I picked this book up used for $3 last summer. Nonetheless I was interested in seeing how I would "read" him now in relation to when I was younger.
I'm comfortable in positing that Brautigan's poetry suffers from Bukowski syndrom: moments of genuine allure lost in a plethora of absolute muted monotony and (hippy) phallocentrism. I mean poems like "Nice Ass" and "All girls should have a...more
Favorites: Love's Not the Way to Treat a Friend, Feasting and Drinking Went on Far into the Night, Just Because, We Stopped at Perfect Days, Chosen by Beauty to Be a Handmaiden of the Stars, Please, A Closet Freezes, Mouths That Kissed in the Hot Ashes of Pompeii, Deer Tracks
Perhaps surprisingly, the most consistently brilliant collection of Brautigan's poetry I've read yet. Or not. I dunno. Nor why. Less grocery lists? or maybe just the presence of "There Is Darkness on Your Lantern". And "Love's Not the Way to Treat a Friend".
I first read this collection back in graduate school but only just recently got a copy of my own. Very good stuff. It mixes poetical language with some very rude, crude phrasing that could have ruined the work but which in Brautigan's hands works.
Brautigan's writing reads effortlessly, which shows that often a great deal went into writing. This book of poetry can be read in one short sitting, but it's probably best to read the bare poems in small doses to absorb them.
It took me about an hour to read this collection of shorties. There's a lot of fun stuff in it, and there's also stuff in it that's so 1970! Hahaha.
Brautigan's one of the great ones though. You gotta love the dude.
Brautigan's one of the great ones though. You gotta love the dude.
I wonder about the women on the covers of these books. They sit so young, never aging on these decrepit paperbacks that haven't seen the light of day since 1984. I hope they're all okay.
Sure, he's best known for "Trout Fishing In America," but his small book of poems impressed me more.
I picked up this little book at a library sale. I return to it every couple years. These poems make me smile.
Here is one of my favorites:
My Concern for Your Tomato Plants
I stare at your tomato plants.
You're not, I'm not pleased with the way
they are growing.
I try to think of ways to help them.
I study them. What do I know about tomatoes?
"Perhaps some nitrate," I suggest.
But I don't know anything...more
I picked up this little book at a library sale. I return to it every couple years. These poems make me smile.
Here is one of my favorites:
My Concern for Your Tomato Plants
I stare at your tomato plants.
You're not, I'm not pleased with the way
they are growing.
I try to think of ways to help them.
I study them. What do I know about tomatoes?
"Perhaps some nitrate," I suggest.
But I don't know anything...more
favs: formal portrait, chosen by beauty to be a handmaiden of the stars, at last our bodies coincide
good but not as good as the pill vs.!
good but not as good as the pill vs.!
Beautiful, sobbing, high-geared fucking
and then to lie silently like deer tracks
in the freshly-fallen snow beside the one
you love. That's all.
and then to lie silently like deer tracks
in the freshly-fallen snow beside the one
you love. That's all.
this gave me happies, I’d never read it before, it’s no Pill vs.the Springheel Mine Disaster but it’s Brautigan, it’s comfort.
This was my first Richard Brautigan book. It is awesome. It isn't his best, but it is pretty darn good.... IF you like poetry.
One-to-two sentence poems that only a Beat would find sufficiently developed. Good images here and there, but just. too. easy.
my friend gave me a "tattered" copy and i don't want to give it back because it looks cool on my bookshelf
Very interesting - some poems are light and funny, others obscure.
Great, fast poetic read. For what it is, it delivers.
wonderful!!!
4.5 stars. funny, poignant and wistful. just great. exquisite little gems, original voice.
Brautigan writes about death, art, love, loss. He employs a colloquial language and understated style that contributes to the realism (and the irony) of the situations he represents in these short poems. His focusing on ordinary events challenges the notion that somehow poetry is removed from the quotidian. Many of the poems, each less than a page long, have surprise endings: he takes the metaphors and similes he explores to places you might not expect.
Not usually one for poetry. That said, I actually quite liked this book . It's got that 70's beatnik sort of feel that is relatable to your average New Yorker. There isn't the anger or over-passion of some of the contemporaries. It's more chillaxed and just matter of fact.
I like the poem related to the title. It's like... here's what happened to Rommell.... "How's your ass?" Cool. Very cool.
I like the poem related to the title. It's like... here's what happened to Rommell.... "How's your ass?" Cool. Very cool.
To read my review of this book and others, please visit:
http://miscmss.blogspot.com/2012/12/t...
http://miscmss.blogspot.com/2012/12/t...
"My Concern for Your Tomato Plants"
I stare at your tomato plants.
You're not, I'm not pleased with the way
they are growing.
I try to think of ways to help them.
I study them. What do I know about tomatoes?
"Perhaps some nitrate," I suggest.
But I don't know anything and now I've taken
to gossiping about them. I'm as shameless
as their lack of growing.
I stare at your tomato plants.
You're not, I'm not pleased with the way
they are growing.
I try to think of ways to help them.
I study them. What do I know about tomatoes?
"Perhaps some nitrate," I suggest.
But I don't know anything and now I've taken
to gossiping about them. I'm as shameless
as their lack of growing.
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Richard Brautigan was a 20th century American writer. His novels and stories often have to do with black comedy, parody, satire, and Zen Buddhism. He is probably best known for his novel Trout Fishing in America. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1984.
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