Richard Brautigan > The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster (original) (raw)

This node of the American Dust website (formerly Brautigan Bibliography and Archive) provides comprehensive information about Richard Brautigan's poetry collection The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster. Published in 1968, this collection of ninety-eight poems was Brautigan's fifth published poetry book. Publication and background information is provided, along with reviews, many with full text. Use the menu tabs below to learn more.

Publication

Publication information regarding the various editions in English of Richard Brautigan's The Pill and the Springhill Mine Disaster is presented below. Corrections and/or additions would be greatly appreciated.
By default all items are presented in ascending order. Use the checkboxes above to present the items in reverse order.

"A10.1: First USA Limited Edition, Four Season Foundation, 1968"

A10.1: First USA Limited Edition, Four Season Foundation, 1968

San Francisco, California: Four Seasons Foundation, 1968
Limited edition of 50 copies, each signed by Brautigan
108 pages; 5.63"x8.75"
Hard Cover; Issued without dust jacket
Light brown paper-covered boards with a dark brown cloth backstrip
Binding by Schubeth Bookbindery
The phrase "Writing 20" on the opening page indicates placement in publisher's writing series edited by Donald Merriam Allen

"A10.2: First USA Trade Paperback Edition, Four Seasons Foundation, 1968"

A10.2: First USA Trade Paperback Edition, Four Seasons Foundation, 1968

1968
San Francisco, California: Four Seasons Foundation
108 pages; 5.5" x 8"; Library of Congress Card Catalog #68-20131
Printed pictorial wrappers
The phrase "Writing 20" on the opening page indicates placement in publisher's writing series edited by Donald Merriam Allen

Covers

Rear cover includes title, a list of reviouos works, two sentences of biographical information, distribution information, and, alont the top, a print ov $1.95.

"A10.3: Delta USA Trade Paperback Edition, Delta/Dell, 1969"

A10.3: Delta USA Trade Paperback Edition, Delta/Dell, 1969

1969
New York: Delta/Dell Publishing
108 pages; 5.5" x 8" Printed pictorial wrappers
ISBN 10: 0385287879

Covers

Front cover photograph by Edmund Shea of Marcia Pacaud, of Montreal, Canada. Taken early in 1968, in a excavation site for the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), at the corner of New Montgomery and Market Streets, in San Francisco (William Hjortsberg 377).
Over top left of photograph is the Delta logo and below that "DELTA//$1.95//$2.35 IN CANADA"
No back cover illustration or photograph, but the subtitle "The Selected Poems 1957-1968" is added there.

Known Printings

A10.3.1 1st printing - November, 1969

"A10.4: First UK Edition, Jonathan Cape, 1970"

A10.4: First UK Edition, Jonathan Cape, 1970

1970
London: Jonathan Cape
108 pages, octavo (22.23 cm)
Photo-illustrated cloth boards with dust jacket

Cover

The just jacket is yellow with most of the front panel consisting of the photograph used on the cover of the Four Seasons Foundation's first wrapper edition.

Proof Copy

Front cover Proof cover, with pasted on cover label

"A10.5: Laurel Press Mass Market Paperback Edition, 1973"

A10.5: Laurel Press Mass Market Paperback Edition, 1973

1973
New York: Laurel Press/Dell Publishing
Mass Market Paperback
Printed pictorial wrappers
108 pages: Price of 95¢ on cover
ISBN 13: 978440369561

Covers

Yellow background with black printing and photograph by Edmund Shea of Marcia Pacaud, of Montreal, Canada. Taken early in 1968, in a excavation site for the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), at the corner of New Montgomery and Market Streets, in San Francisco (William Hjortsberg 377). No back cover illustration or photograph.

Vertical text reading "DELL 6956 95¢". Later printing priced at $1.25.

Known Printings

A10.5.1 1st printing - August 1973
A10.5.2 2nd printing - March 1974
A10.5.3 3rd printing - 1975
A10.5.7 7th printing - 1981

Background

First published in 1968, The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, a collection of ninety-eight poems, was Brautigan's fifth collection of poetry, his seventh published poetry book.

Dedication

This book is for Miss Marcia Pacaud of Montreal, Canada.
Several poems in this collection were dedicated to Marcia Pacaud.

Collection

In addition to thirty-eight previously uncollected poems, The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster included The Return of the Rivers (May 1957), all nine parts of The Galilee Hitch-Hiker (1958), nine poems from the Lay The Marble Tea (1959), seventeen poems from The Octopus Frontier (1960), and all thirty two poems from All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (1967).

The reference to "The Springhill Mine Disaster" in the title comes from the 1958 mining disaster in Springhill, Nova Scotia, Canada. A popular folk song, "The Springhill Mine Disaster," was written shortly afterward by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger.

The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster collects ninety-eight poems by Richard Brautigan. Of those, thirty-eight were not included in his previous poetry collections.
The remainder of the poems in this volume include Brautigan's The Return of the Rivers (May 1957), all nine parts of The Galilee Hitch-Hiker (1958, here counted as one poem), and poems from previous collections, color coded as follows:
= One of 32 poems from All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (1967)
= One of 17 poems from The Octopus Frontier (1960)
= One of 9 poems from Lay The Marble Tea (1959)
= None of the Above

By default all of the poems are listed in ascending order of where they appear in the book. Use the checkboxes above to limit the list, to list the poems in alphabeical order, or to reverse the direction of the listing.

Horse child breakfast,
what are you doing to me?
with your long blonde legs?
with your long blonde face?
with your long blonde hair?
with your perfect blonde ass?

I swear I'll never be the
same again!

Horse child breakfast
what you're doing to me,
I want done forever.

Connections
This poem appears in the feature film The Sun Ship Game, a film about the competitions for placement in the 1969 National Soaring Championships in Marfa, Texas. The 1971 film, directed by Robert Drew, follows two competitors, George Moffat and Gleb Derujinsky. Moffat, an English lecturer, reads the poem to a class at the beginning of the film.

Selected Reprints
San Francisco Express Times, vol. 1, no. 32, Aug. 28, 1968, p. 6.
Learn more

For the soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry who were killed at the Little Bighorn River and the passengers who were lost on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. God bless their souls.

Yes! it's true all my visions
have come home to roost at last.
They are all true now and stand
around me like a bouquet of
lost ships and doomed generals.
I gently put them away in a
beautiful and disappearing vase.

Textual References
"General Custer": Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876) and the 264 men of the 7th Cavalry under his command were annihilated by an estimated 5,000 Sioux Indians on the banks of the Little Big Horn River in eastern Montana Territory, the morning of 26 June 1876.
"Titanic": The White Star liner RMS Titanic sank after striking an iceberg on its maiden voyage, 14 April 1912.

Selected Reprints
A First Reader of Contemporary American Poetry. Edited by Patrick Gleason. Merrill, 1969, pp. 23-26.
Learn more

San Francisco Express Times, vol. 1, no. 32, Aug. 28, 1968, p. 6.
Learn more

For Marcia

Because you always have a clock
strapped to your body, it's natural
that I should think of you as the
correct time:
with your long blonde hair at 8:03,
and your pulse-lightning breasts at
11:17, and your rose-meow smile at 5:30,
I know I'm right.

Textual References
"Marcia": Marcia Pacaud, from Montreal, Canada, appeared in the photograph on the front cover of The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster. Written mid-July, while Brautigan was staying at Pacaud's Sausalito apartment, 15 Princess Lane (apartment 5). Several poems in this collection are dedicated to her.

Recorded
"Listening to Richard Brautigan." Harvest Records.
On one track of this album, titled "The Telephone Door That Leads Eventually to Some Love Poems," Brautigan reads twelve poems collected in The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster, including this one. LISTEN to Brautigan read these poems.

Selected Reprints
San Francisco Express Times, vol. 1, no. 32, Aug. 28, 1968, p. 6.
Learn more

Oh, how perfect death
computes an orange wind
that glows from your footsteps,

and you stop to die in
an orchard where the harvest
fills the stars.

Ah,
you're just a copy
of all the candy bars
I've ever eaten.

Background
A holograph broadside of this poem, written in ink by Brautigan on a sheet of 9" x 12" sketchbook paper, in 1967, is known. Allegedly, Brautigan was commissioned to produce a broadside poem and planned to execute it by hand. This broadside may have been a practice effort by Brautigan to enlarge his distinctively small handwriting. No other versions, practice, finished, or reproduced are reported.

Recorded
"Listening to Richard Brautigan." Harvest Records.
On one track of this album, titled "The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster," Brautigan reads sixteen poems collected in The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster, including this one. LISTEN to Brautigan read these poems.

Selected Reprints
San Francisco Express Times, vol. 1, no. 32, Aug. 28, 1968, p. 6.
Learn more

Man: In the Poetic Mode, Vol. 4. Edited by Joy Zwiegler. McDougal, Littell & Company, 1970, p. 63.
"Learn more."

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?

Textual References
"Christopher Columbus": Italian navigator (1451-1506), considered the "Discoverer of America" during Brautigan's youth.

Selected Reprints
Just What The Country Needs, Another Poetry Anthology. Edited by James McMichael and Dennis Saleh. Wadsworth, 1971, pp. xii, 22-26, 185.
6.5" x 9.5", 190 pages
A poetry anthology collecting 124 poems by 30 poets, including Brautigan.
Includes biographical notes for each contributor and an introduction by X. J. Kennedy, who says, "Anyone who cares for poetry ought to encounter much to delight and startle him here. Among such gratifications for me was . . . Richard Brautigan, abruptly popular, whose best work (see "The Winos on Potrero Hill") moves with a beautiful transparency" (xii).

Reprints five poems by Brautigan: "The Winos on Potrero Hill," "The Quail," "The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster," "Discovery," and "Adrenalin Mother," all from The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster.

The biographical note for Brautigan reads, "Richard Brautigan published several small books of poetry in limited editions and then collected them in one volume, The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster, published first by Four Seasons Foundation and them by Delacorte. He has also published three novels and a book of new poems, Rommel Drives On Deep into Egypt. Brautigan is 36 and has lived in San Francisco for many years."

San Francisco Express Times, vol. 1, no. 49, Dec. 24, 1968, pp 8-9.
Learn more

Oh, pretty girl, you have trapped
yourself in the wrong body. Twenty
extra pounds hang like a lumpy
tapestry on your perfect mammal nature.

Three months ago you were like a
deer staring at the first winter snow.

Now Aphrodite thumbs her nose at you
and tells stories behind your back.

Textual References
"Aphrodite": The Greek goddess of love.

Selected Reprints
Man: In the Poetic Mode, Vol. 4. Edited by Joy Zwiegler. McDougal, Littell & Company, 1970, p. 5.
"Learn more."

For Emmett

Death is a beautiful car parked only
to be stolen on a street lined with trees
whose branches are like the intestines
of an emerald.
You hotwire death, get in, and drive away
like a flag made from a thousand burning
funeral parlors.

You have stolen death because you're bored.
There's nothing good playing at the movies
in San Francisco.

You joyride around for a while listening
to the radio, and then abandon death, walk
away, and leave death for the police
to find.

Textual References
"Emmett": Emmett Grogan, was one of the founders of the San Francisco Diggersin September 1966. Brautigan admired The Diggers for their services to the needy. Grogan included the poem in his autobiography, Ringolevio: A Life Played for Keeps (Boston: Little Brown, 1972. 468-469) and thanked Brautigan.

Selected Reprints
Beatitude. no. 20, Mar. 1969.
Learn More.

Every time we say good-bye
I see it as an extension of
the Hindenburg:
that great 1937 airship exploding
in medieval flames like a burning castle
above New Jersey.
When you leave the house, the
shadow of the Hindenburg enters
to take your place.

Textual References
"the Hindenburg": LZ 129 Hindenburg, a German dirigible (blimp) named after the German general and president Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934). The Hindenburg exploded 6 May 1937 just short of a mooring mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey, following its transatlantic flight.

There is a woman
on the Klamath River
who has five
hundred children
in the basement,
stuffed like
hornets into
a mud nest.
Great Sparrow
is their father.
Once a day
he pulls a
red wagon between
them and
that's all
they know.

Textual References
"Klamath River": A river in Southern Oregon.

You've got
some "Star-Spangled"
nails
in your coffin, kid.
That's what
they've done for you,
son.

Textual References
"Star-Spangled Nails": "The Star-Spangled Banner" written by Francis Scott Key in 1814 and adopted as the United States' national anthem in 1931.

Reprinted
12" x 18" broadside privately published: Berkeley, California, no date, circa 1970?

Learn More

Adrenalin Mother,
with your dress of comets
and shoes of swift bird wings
and shadow of jumping fish,
thank you for touching,
understanding and loving my life.
Without you, I am dead.

Selected Reprints
Beatitude, no. 20, Mar. 1969.
Learn More.

Just What The Country Needs, Another Poetry Anthology. Edited by James McMichael and Dennis Saleh. Wadsworth, 1971, pp. xii, 22-26, 185.
6.5" x 9.5", 190 pages
Learn more

For Marcia

I want your hair
to cover me with maps
of new places,

so everywhere I go
will be as beautiful
as your hair.

Textual References
"Marcia": Marcia Pacaud, from Montreal, Canada, appeared in the photograph on the front cover of The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster. Written mid-July, while Brautigan was staying at Pacaud's Sausalito apartment, 15 Princess Lane (apartment 5).Several poems in this collection are dedicated to her.

Driving through
hot brushy country
in the late autumn,
I saw a hawk
crucified on a
barbed-wire fence.

I guess as a kind
of advertisement
to other hawks,
saying from the pages
of a leading women's
magazine,
"She's beautiful,
but burn all the maps
to your body.
I'm not here
of my own choosing."

Selected Reprints
Beatitude, no. 20, Mar. 1969.
Learn More.

Every time I see him, I think:
Gee, am I glad he's not
my old man.

Selected Reprints
San Francisco Express Times, vol. 1, no. 32, Aug. 28, 1968, p. 6.
Learn more

For M

The sweet juices of your mouth
are like castles bathed in honey.
I've never had it done so gently before.
You have put a circle of castles
around my penis and you swirl them
like sunlight on the wings of birds.

Textual References
"M"; According the William Hjorstberg, "M" stands for Michaela Blake-Grand, whom Brautigan met in January 1967, and to whom he dedicated this erotic poem (Hjortsberg 284).

Blake-Grand appeared with Brautigan in the front cover photograph forTrout Fishing in Americaand with Brautigan and daughterIanthein the front cover photograph for Brautigan's first collection,Trout Fishing in America, The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster, In Watermelon Sugar. Blake-Grand was formerly involved with Andy Cole, Brautigan's friend and roommate from October-December 1963.

"M"; Given the book's dedication, "M" might also signify Marcia Pacaud, from Montreal, Canada, who appeared in the photograph on the front cover. Several poems in this collection are dedicated to her and each bears her full name. Perhaps Brautigan used only the first initial given the nature of the poem, but perhaps he wanted to signify a different person, as Hjortsberg suggests.

With his hat on
he's about five inches taller
than a taxicab.

2 A.M. is the best time
to climb the silver stairs
of Ketchikan and go up into the trees
and the dark prowling deer.

When my wife gets out of bed
to feed the baby at 2 A.M., she turns
on all the lights in Ketchikan
and people start banging on the doors
and swearing at one another.

That's the best time
to climb the silver stairs
of Ketchikan and go up into the trees
and the dark prowling deer.

Textual References
"Ketchikan": A town in Southeast Alaska, the first Alaskan port of call from the mainland United States.

For Marcia

Your necklace is leaking
and blue light drips
from your beads to cover
your beautiful breasts
with a clear African dawn.

Textual References
"Marcia": Marcia Pacaud, from Montreal, Canada, appeared in the photograph on the front cover of The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster. Several poems in this collection are dedicated to her.

A piece of green pepper
fell
off the wooden salad bowl:
so what?

Saturday, August 25, 1888. 5:20 P.M.
is the name of a photograph of two
old women in a front yard, beside
a white house. One of the women is
sitting in a chair with a dog in her
lap. The other woman is looking at
some flowers. Perhaps the women are
happy, but then it is Saturday, August
25, 1888. 5:21 P.M., and all over.

Selected Reprints
San Francisco Express Times, vol. 1, no. 32, Aug. 28, 1968, p. 6.
Learn more

For Michael

Turn a candle inside out
and you've got the smallest
portion of a lion standing
there at the edge of the
shadows.

Textual References
"Michael": Michael McClure, poet and friend who said, "his poem 'For Michael' is beautiful . . .." (Michael McClure 38)

I feel horrible. She doesn't
love me and I wander around
the house like a sewing machine
that's just finished sewing
a turd to a garbage can lid.

It's a star that looks
like a poker game above
the mountains of eastern
Oregon.
There are three men playing.
They are all sheepherders.
One of them has two pair,
the others have nothing.

I was watching a lot of crabs
eating in the tide pools
of the Pacific a few days ago.

When I say a lot: I mean
hundreds of crabs. They eat
like cigars.

Selected Reprints
San Francisco Express Times, vol. 1, no. 32, Aug. 28, 1968, p. 6.
Learn more

For Marcia

I live in the Twentieth Century
and you lie here beside me. You
were unhappy when you fell asleep.
There was nothing I could do about
it. I felt helpless. Your face
is so beautiful that I cannot stop
to describe it, and there's nothing
I can do to make you happy while
you sleep.

Selected Reprints
San Francisco Express Times, vol. 1, 32, Aug. 28, 1968, p. 6.
Learn more

What a good time fancy!
like a leisure white interior
with long yellow curtains.
I'll take it to sleep with me tonight
and hope that my dreams are built
toward beautiful blonde women eating
indirect popcorn.

First Published

Berkeley Review, vol. 1, no. 3, 1957, pp. 14-15.
Published 1921 Walnut Street, Berkeley, California, 1956-1957. Edited/published by William P. Barlow, Jr., George Huppert, and C. A. Tong.
Learn more

Selected Reprints
Poems Here and Now. Edited by David Kherdian. Greenwillow Books, 1976, pp. 13, 17.
LEARN more.

When he went out the door,
he said he wasn't coming back,
but he came back, the son-
ofabitch, and now I'm pregnant,
and he won't get off his ass.

A girl in a green mini-
skirt, not very pretty, walks
down the street.

A businessman stops, turns
to stare at her ass
that looks like a moldy
refrigerator.

There are now 200,000,000 people
in America.

Selected Reprints
Shake the Kaleidoscope: A New Anthology of Modern Poetry. Edited by Milton Klonsky. Simon & Schuster, 1973, pp. 274-276.
Learn more

Driven by hunger, I had another
forced bachelor dinner tonight.
I had a lot of trouble making
up my mind whether to eat Chinese
food or have a hamburger. God,
I hate eating dinner alone. It's
like being dead.

I cannot answer you tonight in small portions.
Torn apart by stormy love's gate, I float
like a phantom facedown in a well where
the cold dark water reflects vague half-built
stars
and trades all our affection, touching, sleeping
together for tribunal distance standing like
a drowned train just beyond a pile of Eskimo
skeletons.

First Collected
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
Retitled "November 24" in The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster table of contents, although the poem itself retains the original title.

When you take your pill
it's like a mine disaster.
I think of all the people
lost inside of you.

Textual References
"Springhill Mine Disaster": The disaster occurred in 1958 in Springhill, Nova Scotia, Canada. A popular folk song, "The Springhill Mine Disaster," was written shortly afterward by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger.

Selected Reprints
Earth, Air, Fire, and Water: A Collection of Over 125 Poems. Edited by Frances Monson McCullough. Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan, 1971, pp. 27, 130, 142.Learn more

Just What The Country Needs, Another Poetry Anthology. Edited by James McMichael and Dennis Saleh. Wadsworth, 1971, pp. xii, 22-26, 185.
6.5" x 9.5", 190 pages
Learn more

San Francisco Express Times, vol. 1, no. 49, Dec. 24, 1968, pp. 8-9.
Learn more

Wells, Tim, editor. Hardest Part Rising, no. 22, 2000.
Learn more

Oh, Marcia,
I want your long blonde beauty
to be taught in high school,
so kids will learn that God
lives like music in the skin
and sounds like a sunshine harpsichord.
I want high school report cards
to look like this:

Playing with Gentle Glass Things
A

Computer Magic
A

Writing Letters to Those You Love
A

Finding out about Fish
A

Marcia's Long Blonde Beauty
A+!

First Published
Unicorn Books of Goleta, California, [December 1967; see Darllington article below] or January 1968?
Broadside printed on tan newsprint paper with the additional title "The San Francisco Weather Report."
Learn more

Selected Reprints
Paris Review, no. 45, Winter 1968, p. 140.
Poem titled here "San Francisco Weather Report."
Learn more

Man: In the Poetic Mode, Vol. 4. Edited by Joy Zwiegler. McDougal, Littell & Company, 1970, p. 50.
"Learn more."

Mentioned
"Please Plant This Page." Sandy Darlington. (San Francisco Express Times, vol. 1, no. 9, 21 Mar. 1968, p. 5.) Article includes a photograph by Bob Seidemann of Brautigan sitting in a wicker chair. Darlington profiles Brautigan's Please Plant This Book, using it as an example of how authors release books to their readers. Says, of "Gee, You're So Beautiful That It's Staring to Rain," "Last December, Richard Brautigan and his friends printed 2500 copies of a poem called The San Francisco Weather Reportand handed them out in the financial district at noon. It hadn't rained in two weeks. A friend of his told him later of handing the poem to a secretary who began to read it out loud. After the title, the next line is Gee, You're so Beautiful That It's starting to Rain. As she read the line, raindrops started hitting the paper. She looked up at him, took a step backwards and just stared. There's so many ways to say hello."
Learn more

The day they busted the Grateful Dead
rain stormed against San Francisco
like hot swampy scissors cutting Justice
into the evil clothes that alligators wear.

The day they busted the Grateful Dead
was like a flight of winged alligators
carefully measuring marble with black
rubber telescopes.

The day they busted the Grateful Dead
turned like the wet breath of alligators
blowing up balloons the size of the
Hall of Justice.

Textual References
"Busted the Grateful Dead": Several members of the popular San Francisco rock band, "The Grateful Dead," were arrested for drug possession on 2 October 1967. On 4 October the band held a press conference to protest the arrest.

Selected Reprints
Earth, Air, Fire, and Water: A Collection of Over 125 Poems. Edited by Frances Monson McCullough. Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan, 1971, pp. 27, 130, 142.
Learn more

San Francisco Express Times, vol. 1, no. 49, Dec. 24, 1968, pp. 8-9.
Learn more

Torn apart by the storms of love
and put back together by the calms
of love,

I lie here in a harbor
that does not know
where your body ends
and my body begins.

Fish swim between our ribs
and sea gulls cry like mirrors
to our blood.

Selected Reprints
Beatitude. no. 20, Mar. 1969.
Learn More.

Seven Watermelon Suns: Selected Poems of Richard Brautigan. University of California at Santa Cruz, 1974.
Learn More.

We're cooking dinner tonight.
I'm making a kind of Stonehenge
stroganoff.
Marcia is helping me. You
already know the legend
of her beauty.
I've asked her to rub garlic
on the meat. She takes
each piece of meat like a lover
and rubs it gently with garlic.
I've never seen anything like this
before. Every orifice
of the meat is explored, caressed
relentlessly with garlic.
There is a passion here that would
drive a deaf saint to learn
the violin and play Beethoven at
Stonehenge.

Textual References
"Stonehenge": An assemblage of upright stones on the Salisbury Plain in Southern England.
"Marcia": Marcia Pacaud, from Montreal, Canada, appeared in the photograph on the front cover of The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster. Several poems in this collection are dedicated to her.
"Beethoven": Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), a German composer.

Selected Reprints
San Francisco Express Times, vol. 1, no. 49, December 24, 1968, pp. 8-9.
Learn more

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

First Published
San Francisco: Free City News, no. 1, October 1967.
A broadside poem, included in an anthology of ten poems, each published as broadsides by the Diggers. Also issued separately.
Learn more

Simulateously issued as a separate broadside
Learn more

Brautigan originally titled this poem part of "Three Poems to Celebrate the History of Marcia" in reference to Marcia Pacaud. Later, it was collected and retitled "Boo, Forever" in The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster

Selected Reprints
San Francisco Express Times, vol. 1, no. 49, Dec. 24, 1968, pp. 8-9.
Learn more

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Reviews

Reviews for The Pill and the Springhill Mine Disaster are detailed below. See also reviews of Brautigan's collected works for commentary about Brautigan's work and his place in American literature.
By default all items are presented in ascending order. Use the checkboxes above to present the items in alphabetical and/or reverse order.

"Anonymous. Time, 24 Jan. 1969"

Anonymous. "Poetry: Combatting Society With Surrealism." Time, 24 Jan. 1969, pp. 72-76.

Reviews His Toy, His Dream, His Rest by John Berryman; White-Haired Lover by Karl Shapiro; The Body by Michael Benedikt; Shall We Gather at the River by James Wright; Breaking Camp by Marge Piercy; Coming Closer by Helen Chasm; The Residual Years by William Everson; Bending the Bow by Robert Duncan; The Back Country by Gary Snyder; Incarnations: Poems, 1966-1968 by Robert Penn Warren; Cables to the Ace by Thomas Merton; and The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster by Brautigan. Notes the potential for success in Brautigan's unusual poetic approach. READ this review.

"Warsh, Lewis. Poetry, Mar. 1970"

Warsh, Lewis. "Out of Sight." Poetry, Mar. 1970, pp. 440-446.

Reviews Stones by Tom Clark, Instructions for Undressing the Human Race by Fernando Alegria, and The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster and In Watermelon Sugar by Brautigan. Says, of The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster, "Brautigan has learned from Jack Spicer about the limits and the possibilities of humor, of how far you can go in your own head while still remaining in control of the poem. The delicateness of this balance leads to an intensity which, when successful, overshadows the sometimes self-indulgent choice of subject matter. . . . Brautigan's poems exist to give pleasure to anyone who wants to go along." READ this review.

Reprinted
Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 3.Edited by Carolyn Riley. Gale Research Company, 1975, pp. 86-90.

"Brownjohn, Alan. New Statesman, 4 Dec. 1970"

Brownjohn, Alan. "Absorbing Chaos." New Statesman, 4 Dec. 1970, pp. 772-773.

Reviews The Complete Poems by Elizabeth Bishop, Snapshopts of a Daughter-in-Law by Adrienne Rich, The Fire Screen by James Merrill, In the Early Morning Rain by Ted Berrigan, Lion Lion by Tom Raworth, Scantlings by Gael Turnbull, Lucidities by Elizabeth Jennings, In Focus by Jeremy Robson, Thunder of Grass by John Moat Barrie and Jenkins, Expostulations by Teddy Hodge, The Wooden Muse, Part One by Alec Pope, and The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster by Brautigan.

The complete reference to Brautigan reads, "Richard Brautigan's novels are highly praised. His poems are minor adjuncts to his prose: more coherent and funny than [Ted] Berrigan's [In The Early Morning Rainalso reviewed], but with the dreadful, characteristic soft-centredness: 'I want your hair/ to cover me with maps/ of new places, so everywhere I go/ will be as beautiful/ as you hair.'"

"Porter, Peter. The Observer, 3 Jan. 1971"

Porter, Peter. "Dazzling Landscapes." The Observer, 3 Jan. 1971, p. 30.

Reviews The Complete Poems by Elizabeth Bishop, Collected Poems by Alan Dugan, Snapshots of A Daughter-In-Law by Adrienne Rich, The Fire Screen by James Merrill, In the Early Morning Rain by Ted Berrigen, and The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster by Brautigan.

The full reference to Brautigan reads, "I didn't enjoy Richard Brautigan. Liberated jokes and instant mysticism—his poems turn everything to favour and prettiness. Try 'December 30':—
At 1.03 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."

"Williams, Hugo. London Magazine, Feb. 1971"

Williams, Hugo. "Strolling across the Bridge." London Magazine, Feb. 1971, pp. 81-84.

Reviews In the Early Morning Rain by Ted Berrigan, Lion Lion by Tom Raworth, Loss of Two Anchors by Pete Morgan, and The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disasterby Brautigan. Calls Brautigan's poetry "sugary, predigested and schoolgirlish" and concludes "He deserves a sucky medal with a picture of himself on it for his own personal sweetness." READ this review.

Reprinted
Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 12.Edited by Dedria Bryfonski. Gale Research Company, 1980, pp. 57-74.

"Malley, Terence. Richard Brautigan, 1972"

Malley, Terence. Richard Brautigan. Warner, 1972.

ISBN 10: 0446689424
ISBN 13: 9780446689427

First printing October 1972. The first critical survey of Brautigan's work through 1971. Chapter 1, "Magic Up and Down," deals with The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster and Rommel Drives On Deep into Egypt. One of several reference books focusing on Brautigan.

"Lynch, Dennis Daley. Towers, no. 47, Fall 1976"

Lynch, Dennis Daley "The Poetry of Richard Brautigan" Towers, no. 47, Northern Illinois University, Fall 1976, pp. 49-52

A scathing anaylsis of the poems inThe Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster andRommel Drives On Deep into Egypt. The sumary paragraph reads:
"Yet most of Brautigan's poems fail; it is a gifted artist who in our time can achieve critical success both as a novelist and a poet (as have Dickey, Updike, and just a few others). Lewis Warsh has enthusiastically stated, 'The readability of Brautigan's poems makes me not want to think too hard; they exist to give pleasure to anyone who wants to go along.' but therein lies the deficiency of the poetry: it is less art than it is a substitute for valium. To those of us who treasure Brautigan's novels, his poetry will remain an embarrassment."
READ this review or or VIEW the entire magazine onlinethe NIU website.

"Bokinsky, Caroline J. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 5: American Poets Since World War II, 1980"

Bokinsky, Caroline J. "Richard Brautigan." Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 5: American Poets Since World War II. Edited by Donald J. Greiner. Gale Research Company, 1980, pp. 96-99.

ISBN 10: 0810309246
ISBN 13: 9780810309241

Critical comments onThe Return of the Rivers,The Galilee Hitch-Hiker,Lay the Marble Tea,The Octopus Frontier,All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace,The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster,Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt,Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork, and June 30th, June 30th. Also provides some biographical and bibliographical information. Says The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster confirms Brautigan's "magical power of transforming an image into something else." READ this review.

"Nilsen, Don L. F. and Allen Pace Nilsen. Journal of Reading, vol. 26, no. 1, Oct. 1982"

Nilsen, Don L. F., and Allen Pace Nilsen. "An Exploration and Defense of the Humor in Young Adult Literature." Journal of Reading, vol. 26, no. 1, Oct. 1982, pp.58-65.

Says humor draws teenage readers to writers like Kurt Vonnegut, Philip Roth, John Irving, Joseph Heller, and Richard Brautigan. Argues that despite the importance of humor, little attention has been paid to what teenagers think is humorous. Reports on a study undertaken by the authors which finds choices by teenage readers "not quite as appalling as we had first thought."

NotesA Confederate General from Big Sur,In Watermelon Sugar, andThe Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disasteras "recommended humorous books."

The full reference to Brautigan reads, "Richard Brautigan also surprises readers with innocent sounding grossness. For example, he explains the title of his novel [sic] The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster: 'When you take your pill it's like a mine disaster. I think of all the people lost inside you.'"

"Anonymous. Time, 24 Jan. 1969"

"Bokinsky, Caroline J. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 5: American Poets Since World War II, 1980"

"Brownjohn, Alan. New Statesman, 4 Dec. 1970"

"Lynch, Dennis Daley. Towers, no. 47, Fall 1976"

"Malley, Terence. Richard Brautigan, 1972"

"Nilsen, Don L. F. and Allen Pace Nilsen. Journal of Reading, vol. 26, no. 1, Oct. 1982"

"Porter, Peter. The Observer, 3 Jan. 1971"

"Warsh, Lewis. Poetry, Mar. 1970"

"Williams, Hugo. London Magazine, Feb. 1971"

In Translation

This work has been translated into 8 different languages in at least 20 editions.
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"Richard Brautigan"
Caroline J. Bokinsky
Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 5: American Poets Since World War II. Edited by Donald J. Greiner. Gale Research Company, 1980, pp. 96-99.
NOTE: The following material may be protected under copyright. It is used here for archival, educational, and research purposes, not for commercial gain or public distribution. Individuals using this material should respect the author's rights in any use of this material.

Richard Brautigan was born in Tacoma, Washington, the son of Bernard F. and Lula Mary Keho Braurigan. He married Virginia Dionne Adler, from whom he is now divorced, on 8 June 1957, and he has a daughter, Ianthe. He moved to San Francisco in 1958 and there befriended such poets as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert Duncan, Phillip Whalen, and Michael McClure. He is often categorized as one of the San Francisco Poets. Brautigan was poet-in-residence at California Institute of Technology in 1967 and received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1968-1969. He maintains no single place of residence, claiming San Francisco, Montana, and Tokyo as homes. He lives a secluded life, despite his wide-spread popularity, often retreating to his home in Montana.

He began his writing career as a poet, gained most of his acclaim from his novels, and became a cult hero with Trout Fishing in America (1967). One of his few published comments on writing is recorded in David Meltzer's The San Francisco Poets (1971): "I wrote poetry for seven years to learn how to write a sentence because I really wanted to write novels and I figured that I couldn't write a novel until I could write a sentence. I used poetry as a lover but I never made her my old lady." By experimenting with poetry, he developed his skills with language. Many readers consider him a master of the simile and metaphor because he is able to link seemingly unrelated ideas and concepts.

In precise, lucid words, Brautigan encourages the reader neither to pry deeply nor to overinterpret. As Robert Kern notes, Brautigan's style is like that of William Carlos Williams, with a "Poetics of Primitivism" that "does not look like literature and is not meant to." This primitive, pure form of writing is almost "preliterary," according to Kern, because it is based on no historical traditions but instead is invented "out of the daily events and objects of [the poet's] immediate physical locality." Brautigan's primitivism, according to Kern, lies in the intentional naivete of his poems as the poet draws attention to himself in the act of articulating his emotional responses and observations of the world. Tony Tanner, although focusing more on Brautigan's novels than his poetry, finds Brautigan's achievement in his "magically delicate verbal ephemera."

What appears as nonliterary in Brautigan's work is more an attempt to start anew. Deliberately using poetry as a stimulating "lover," he experiments with his sensations, tests his emotions, and observes external reality, with the ulterior motive of grasping language at its most elementary level and recording his gut responses. His creative imagination is constantly at work as he looks at life in terms of analogies; one form of experience, or one particular observation, is like something else. The poet imposes his unique order on the world's chaos as he sees life in a new way, giving meaning to the meaningless. The reader must strip himself of expectations and conventions in order to approach and accept Brautigan's poetry as a refreshing new version of experience. Despite his concern for the new, Brautigan has been influenced by the Imagists, the Japanese, and the French Symbolists. From the Imagists and the Japanese he inherits a concern for the precision of words, while the Symbolist influence is apparent in his references to Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud and in his use of synesthesia, in which one type of sensation stimulates a different sense, or a mental stimulus elicits a physical response, or vice versa.

Brautigan's earliest published poem, The Return of the Rivers (1957), is an observation of the external world as a surreal, romanticized setting in which the cycle of life is exemplified in the river, sea, rain, and ocean. He demonstrates the creative power of the poet's imagination to an even greater degree in The Galilee Hitch-Hiker (1958). The book consists of nine separate poems in which the speaker describes his encounters with Baudelaire, who appears in a different pose in each section. Terence Malley considers the collection "one of Brautigan's finest achievements" and suggests that Baudelaire is a symbol of "the artist who can transform anything into anything else."

With his next book, Lay the Marble Tea (1959), Brautigan's exploration of language extends to similes and metaphors with humorous twists as suggested by such titles as "Feel Free to Marry Emily Dickinson" or "Twenty Eight Cents for My Old Age." His experiments with the simile include strange analogies in which "a dish of ice cream" looks "like Kafka's hat," or in "In a Cafe":

"I watched a man in a cafe fold a slice of
bread as if he were folding a birth certificate
or looking at the photograph of a dead lover."

Brautigan's imaginative reconstructions of reality also include such recollections of his youth as "The Chinese Checkers Players" and "A Childhood Spent in Tacoma."

The Octopus Frontier (1960) continues Brautigan's creation of order and meaning from objects in the literal world by using them to construct a fantasy world within his own imagination. In many of the poems the speaker leads the reader through the maze of Brautigan's imagination, as in "Private Eye Lettuce," an attempt to show how man's imagination makes connections, no matter how extraneous, and gives significance to "objects of this world." While "Private Eye Lettuce" makes logical associations, in "The Wheel" the poet assumes a child's view of the world where the analogies are more fanciful. "The Winos on Potrero Hill," however, relies more on realistic detail and precision. The poet acts as a painter, in a meticulous step-by-step process, putting each object in a specific place to create a painting. "The Postman" creates its effect by allusion because although the poet never says what "The smell / of vegetables / on a cold day" elicits, the accumulation of similes causes a synesthetic response. The sensation of smell suggests the taste of fresh summer vegetables. The taste in turn stimulates the feel of a warm summer day. All sensations merge in the imagination, and even those that are illusions appear real for a moment.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (1967) provides a transition to the collection that was to become his most popular and was to establish his position as a poet, The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster (1968). Recalling the romanticism of The Return of the Rivers while looking forward to the humor that characterizes The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, the long poem, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, presents a vision of an ideal world where man and nature exist in harmony, "where mammals and computers / live together in mutually / programming harmony," and where the perfect world is "all watched over / by machines of loving grace."

The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster includes most of the poems that appeared in previous volumes and new poems that confirm his magical power of transforming an image into something else. The title poem, most often mentioned by critics, is a Brautigan classic. A sudden revelation, which flashes into the poet's head as an insignificant moment, becomes an analogy with greater proportions. Robert Kern praises "Haiku Ambulance," a brief poem often casually dismissed as pointless, and links it to William Carlos Williams's "The Red Wheelbarrow." In some of the poems Brautigan's extravagant metaphors become farfetched. Such poems as "The Harbor" "The Horse That Had a Flat Tire," or "Death is a Beautiful Parked Car Only" verge on the incomprehensible. Yet in "The Garlic Meat Lady" he is absorbed in the elemental delights of life. He identifies passion with Marcia preparing dinner:

"She takes
each piece of meat like a lover
and rubs it gently with garlic.
I've never seen anything like this
before. Each orifice
of the meat is explored, caressed
relentlessly with garlic."

Brautigan continues his experiments with similes and metaphors in the next volume, Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt (1970), but his poetry also begins to move into social commentary. Some pages are blank, with only titles at the top, as if poems were intended to be there but were never created. Along with the humor, he takes a verbal stab at critics, alludes to Robert Kennedy's death, suggests the economic plight of the country, and depicts the lack of communication between husband and wife. In "Jules Verne Zucchini," he hits hard at the discrepancy between scientific progress—man walking on the moon—and people starving on the earth. "Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt" suggests the futility of war, the cycle of history, and dead heroes forgotten by the passage of time. A momentous occasion, like Rommel's penetration into Egypt, is meaningless to someone seeing the news account (the title of the poem is an old newspaper headline) years after the event.

A new tone emerges in Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork(1976). Brautigan's terse messages and witty similes are overshadowed by a blacker humor and a darker, more pensive mood. The poems are more personal; the reader even glimpses the poet in the process of writing. The blacker poems include references to Captain Martin who is lost at sea and to "a freshly-dug grave," "a blind lighthouse," or "a poorly-designed angel." An awareness of growing old is a key subject, as in "The Last Surprise":

"The last surprise is when you come
gradually to realize that nothing
surprises you anymore."

A poet who once saw life in pleasant, whimsical analogies is now filled with foreboding and pessimism. His sensations are no longer so acute. In "Fresh Paint" the speaker expresses perplexity over his associations of the sight of funeral parlors, the smell of fresh paint, and the sensation in his stomach. He retreats to a private wilderness in "Montana/1973" to reexperience life in nature, to rediscover his true essence, and to get back in touch with his own sensations, with the world, and with the cosmos. He concludes the volume with an existential pose, convincing himself that retreating to Montana is an action with some value:

"Nobody knows what the experience is worth
but it's better than sitting on your hands,
I keep telling myself."

In June 30th, June 30th (1978) Brautigan comes to terms with an important moment in his youth: the death of his uncle in 1942, which was indirectly caused by a head wound from bomb fragments during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. He died a year later from a fall that Brautigan felt would have been avoided had he not been injured. In the introduction to the poems, Brautigan states that after going through a period of hatred for the Japanese, "the war slipped back into memory." When he discovered their art and their humanity, he could forgive the Japanese and was eventually drawn to the country, where he confronted his animosity during a visit that lasted from 13 May to 30 June 1976. Leaving Japan on the evening of 30 June, he crossed the international date line in mid-Pacific and landed in the United States at the beginning of a second 30 June, feeling that part of himself was left behind in Japan. The book's title signifies the divided self, while also implying the poet's coming to terms with his other self.

Brautigan calls the poems a diary: critics have referred to them collectively as one poem. June 30th, June 30th is the most unified of Brautigan's volumes not only because the poems pertain to a single experience but because the speaker of all the poems is Brautigan himself examining his reactions to this experience. For the first time, Brautigan is a confessional poet, lost and alone in a strange land, unable to communicate. There is a barrier separating him not only from those who do not speak English, as "The Silence of Language" and "Talking" indicate, but also from those who speak his own language. He effectively conveys to the reader this greater lack of communication in "On the Elevator Going Down." He is just one individual among the millions in Tokyo in "The 12,000,000" and "Japanese Children," and he discovers that Tokyo is no different from any other city. His observations of a sleeping cat, a fly, or dreams could have been made anywhere else in the world. In "A Study in Roads," he comments that with "All the possibilities of life, / all roads led here," expressing the feeling that he has been a sporadic wanderer. Although he is well known, "Ego Orgy on a Rainy Night in Tokyo with Nobody to Make Love to" ends with a despairing tone: "I will sleep alone tonight in Tokyo."

As Brautigan told Meltzer in 1971, "I love writing poetry but it's taken time, like a difficult courtship that leads to a good marriage, for us to get to know each other." June 30th, June 30th is the transition from a lifelong courtship of poetry into a commitment whereby he gives himself to poetry, making her his "old lady."

Richard Brautigan > The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster (original) (raw)

Publication

A10.1: First USA Limited Edition, Four Season Foundation, 1968

A10.2: First USA Trade Paperback Edition, Four Seasons Foundation, 1968

Covers

A10.3: Delta USA Trade Paperback Edition, Delta/Dell, 1969

Covers

Known Printings

A10.4: First UK Edition, Jonathan Cape, 1970

Cover

Proof Copy

A10.5: Laurel Press Mass Market Paperback Edition, 1973

Covers

Known Printings

Background

Dedication

Collection

Contents

Reviews

Anonymous. "Poetry: Combatting Society With Surrealism." Time, 24 Jan. 1969, pp. 72-76.

Warsh, Lewis. "Out of Sight." Poetry, Mar. 1970, pp. 440-446.

Brownjohn, Alan. "Absorbing Chaos." New Statesman, 4 Dec. 1970, pp. 772-773.

Porter, Peter. "Dazzling Landscapes." The Observer, 3 Jan. 1971, p. 30.

Williams, Hugo. "Strolling across the Bridge." London Magazine, Feb. 1971, pp. 81-84.

Malley, Terence. Richard Brautigan. Warner, 1972.

Lynch, Dennis Daley "The Poetry of Richard Brautigan" Towers, no. 47, Northern Illinois University, Fall 1976, pp. 49-52

Bokinsky, Caroline J. "Richard Brautigan." Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 5: American Poets Since World War II. Edited by Donald J. Greiner. Gale Research Company, 1980, pp. 96-99.

Nilsen, Don L. F., and Allen Pace Nilsen. "An Exploration and Defense of the Humor in Young Adult Literature." Journal of Reading, vol. 26, no. 1, Oct. 1982, pp.58-65.

In Translation

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