Today is the anniversary of the birthday of one of the most original, reviled, inventive, maligned, loving, oft summarily dismissed, American poets of, well, all time: Richard Brautigan. Here are two poems from his late volume, June 30th, June 30th, a poetic journal of his first trip to Japan.
JapanJapan begins and ends
----with Japan.
Nobody else knows the
----story.
. . . Japanese dust
in the Milky Way.Tokyo
May 18, 1976
Homage to the Japanese Haiku Poet IssaDrunk in a Japanese
----bar
----I'm
----OKTokyo
May 18, 1976
All these years later, we still miss you, Mister B.
And two birthday poems for Richard by Master Issa
paying no heed
to Buddha's birthday...
wildflowers
Buddha amid birthday flowers--
even the moon
deigns to riseIssa
translated by David G. Lanoue
best,
Don
4 comments:
well:(seemingly) another:
co-incidence:
just re-read His
An Unfortunate Woman
and his daughter (Ianthe)'s:
You Can't Catch Death
(just rereading her chapter The Sound of Death...
sacred stuff)
It's good to keep his memory alive.
Love Brautigan. Discovered him in 1985. Huge influence on my writing then, and now.
Ed, thanks for the reminder about Ianthe's book ...
Bart, his flame will always burn here ...
Thanks, Theresa ... a lot more folks have been influenced by him than they even realize ... his influence on others keeps resonating through the generations.
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