Richard Brautigan

I'm not a poetry person. I used to be, when I was in high school, but even then I was only reading the poets that every teenage girl swoons over; e.e. cummings, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton. There are poets that I like, but in general I am not going to sit down with a book of poetry. I don't enjoy things that have to be read several times in order to be understood, unless they're going to make me feel really sad or really happy. I like poets that evoke maximum emotion in minimum words, like Charles Bukowski. Easy to read, funny, makes me depressed. Check, check, and check! But what if you want a version of Charles Bukowski that doesn't, like, make you feel terrible to be a woman? Enter Richard Brautigan.

Richard Brautigan manages to describe things in ways that don't make any sense at all, yet they make perfect sense. It's the same way I feel about a really good pulled pork sandwich; I wouldn't be able to tell you why it tastes so great, it just does. Richard Brautigan's poems make me see things from different angles, and they make me sadder than just about anything. Here's one of my favorites:

"Boo, Forever"
Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
top,
I'm haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.

Probably my favorite website in all of the internet is The Brautigan Bibliography and Archive. Don't visit it unless you have an afternoon, or an evening, or a few days to kill. You can read his poetry there, as well as read about his life.
Here's one of his most famous poems:

"Love Poem"
It's so nice
to wake up in the morning
all alone
and not have to tell somebody
you love them
when you don't love them
any more.

Not that all of them are so sad. Some of his poems are funny, maybe even cute, without any hint of sadness:

"December 30"
At 1:30 in the morning a fart
smells like a marriage between
an avocado and a fish head.

I have to get out of bed
to write this down without
my glasses on.

You can search by poem title and also by collection title in the archive. It's such a great resource and I'm so happy it exists. You can also, if you're curious, read about Richard Brautigan's life and death, but be warned that it is confusing and tragic, and not in the fun way. If you're near a good library or in the mood to buy some books, I'd recommend his poetry collections. For me, his novels have been a little difficult to get through, but maybe they'll be exactly what you're looking for! Several summers ago on my lunch break from my shitty summer job I was reading Trout Fishing in America, which features a scene where two characters have sex in a pool of stagnant river water and a dead fish floats by. Now I can't eat chicken salad anymore without thinking of that scene. SO be warned, I guess. Regardless of what I just said, please check out Richard Brautigan's poetry and that wonderful, wonderful website. Whenever I visit it, I think, "So THIS is what the internet was made for!"