Saturday, January 30, 2010

Richard Brautigan: Two Poems



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.


Japan
Japan 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 Issa
Drunk in a Japanese
----bar
----I'm
----OK
Tokyo
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 rise
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue



best,
Don

4 comments:

Ed Baker said...

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)

Bart said...

It's good to keep his memory alive.

Theresa Williams said...

Love Brautigan. Discovered him in 1985. Huge influence on my writing then, and now.

Issa's Untidy Hut said...

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.