Richard Brautigan > Rommel Drives On Deep into Egypt (original) (raw)

This node of the American Dust website (formerly Brautigan Bibliography and Archive) provides comprehensive information about Richard Brautigan's poetry collection Rommel Drives On Deep into Egypt. Published in 1970, this collection of eighty-five poems was Brautigan's eighth 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 Rommel Drives On Deep into Egypt 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.

"A11.1: 1st USA Hardback Edition, Seymore Lawrence/Delacourt Press, 1970"

A11.1: 1st USA Hardback Edition, Seymore Lawrence/Delacourt Press, 1970

New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1970
5.75" x 8.25"; 85 pages
ISBN 10: 0385288638
First printing 1 April 1970.
Hard Cover, with printed dust jacket.
Pictorial paper-covered boards reproduce dust jacket photographs

Covers

Front cover photograph of Beverly Allen in a sandbox by Edmund Shea taken in the panhandle of Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Select the "Background" tab, above, to learn more about Beverly Allen.

Back cover photograph, a detail of the sandbox, was also taken by Shea in the panhandle of Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.

Top of front jacket flap reads "$4.95 7495-6"

Advance Reader Copy

Approximately twenty sets of folded, gathered, but unsewn, untrimmed signatures were laid into the dust jacket and sent to New York publishers from San Francsico for review and promotional purposes. Brautigan insisted that his friend, Andrew Hoyem, design the book (and Grabhorn-Hoyem is so credited). As a result, the book was manufactured in San Francisco rather than New York, Delacorte's usual procedure. No other advance copies or proofs.

"A11.2: Delta Trade Paperback Edition, Delta/Dell, 1970"

A11.2: Delta Trade Paperback Edition, Delta/Dell, 1970

1970
New York: Delta/Dell Publishing
5.75" x 8.25"; 85 pages; First printing 1 April 1970.
Trade Paperback in illustrated wrappers.
ISBN 13: 97880440374961

Covers

Front cover photograph of Beverly Allen in a sandbox by Edmund Shea taken in the panhandle of Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Select the "Background" tab, above, to learn more about Beverly Allen.
Printed over lower left of photograph is Delta logo, and underneath "DELTA 1.95//1.95//1.95//2.35 IN CANADA"

Back cover photograph, a detail of the sandbox, was also taken by Shea in the panhandle of Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.

Known Printings

A11.2.1 1st printing - April, 1970
A11.2.3 3rd printing - 1973

"A11.3: 1st UK Editions, Picador-Pan Books, 1973"

A11.3: 1st UK Editions, Picador-Pan Books, 1973

1973
London: Picador-Pan Books

Covers

Front cover photograph of Beverly Allen in a sandbox by Edmund Shea from the first USA eiditon.

"A11.4: Mass Market Paperback Edition, Laurel/Dell, 1973"

A11.4: Mass Market Paperback Edition, Laurel/Dell, 1973

August 1973
New York: Laurel/Dell Publishing
Mass Market Paperback
108 pages
ISBN 10: 0440374960
Pictorial paper wrapperss reproduce first edition dust jacket photographs

Cover

Red background front cover with black printing and photograph of Beverly Allen in a sandbox by Edmund Shea taken in the panhandle of Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Select the "Background" tab, above, to learn more about Beverly Allen.

Vertical text along left side of front cover reading "DELL 4746 95¢".

"A11.5: Delacorte Paperback Edition, 1979"

A11.5: Delacorte Paperback Edition, 1979

January 1979
New York: Delacorte Press
Printed wrappers
ISBN 10: 0035288646
ISBN 13: 9780035288644

Cover

A facsimile of the first edition cover

Background

First published in 1970, Rommel Drives On Deep into Egypt, a collection of eighty-five poems, was Brautigan's sixth collection of poetry; his eighth published poetry book.

Dedication

This book is for Roxy and Judy Gordon.

Brautigan visited Roxy and Judy Gordon in Austin, Texas, in August 1970. While there he was issued a Texas fishing license (August 14, 1970). It notes his height (6'4") and weight (165 pounds).

The poem "Autobiography (Polish It like a Piece of Silver)," collected in Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork, contains a reference to Judy Gordon and Byrds, a town in central Texas, near Brownwood. Two poems, "A Study in Roads" and "Stone (real," both collected in June 30th, June 30th contain references to Bee Caves, Texas, a small town twelve miles west of Austin. Brautigan may have visited Bee Caves with the Gordons.

Roxy Gordon, in turn, dedicated his book, Some Things I Did (Austin, Texas: The Encino Press, 1971) to_RICHARD BRAUTIGAN_ whose favorite gun is the Colt Navy .36

In publicity materials associated with the publication of Gordon's book Brautigan wrote, "Roxy and Judy Gordon are two very nice people with an open and perceptive way. Reading Roxy's book is to meet them."

As to Gordon's reference to Brautigan's interest in the Colt Navy .36 handgun, novelist Tom McGuane said, "[Brautigan] had a fascination with the . . . Colt because it seemed to sum up gun owning, democratic gun manufacture, and excellence, all in one thing (Peter Manso and Michael McClure 113).

Beverly Allen

A photograph of Beverly Allen in a sandbox in Golden Gate Park was used on the front cover of Rommel Drives On Deep into Egypt. As Allen explains in her memoir, My Days with Richard, she was working, in December 1969, as a house model at Saks Fifth Avenue in San Francisco. She met Brautigan a week before Christmas at Caffè Trieste and he offered her a job modeling for the cover photograph. The actual photographic session took place on 13 January 1970. Golden Gate Park was used rather than North Beach because the weather was grim. The sandbox was used because Brautigan wanted sand for the Rommel theme. And because Brautigan wanted to evoke Nazi stereotypes, Allen says she wore a long, black plastic raincoat over a yellow miniskirt, and tall black boots. Shea took several photographs; Brautigan directed. The next day, Allen left for Rome, Italy, where she was studying music and literature. She eventually earned a degree in comparative literature and worked as a tenured professor at Syracuse University. A photograph of Brautigan and Allen appeared on the front covers of the 1973 and 1977 Ballantine edition, the 1970 Jonathan Cape edition, and the 1973 Picador-Pan editions of A Confederate General from Big Sur. Allen talks about the photograph and her experience with Brautigan in a Syracuse Post-Standard article (O'Connell, Max B."SU Professor Beverly Allen talks about her experience with late writer Richard Brautigan." Syracuse Post-Standard Central New York 12 Jan. 2014, p. I 1.)

Rommel Drives On Deep into Egypt collects eighty-five poems by Richard Brautigan. Unless noted, all poems were first published in this volume.
By default all items are listed and are presented in ascending order. Use the checkboxes above to limit the items listed and present the items in alphabetical and/or reverse order.

—San Francisco Chronicle headline
June 26, 1942

Rommel is dead.
His army has joined the quicksand legions
of history where the battle is always
a metal echo saluting a rusty shadow.
His tanks are gone.
How's your ass?

Textual References
"Rommel": Nazi general Erwin Rommel (1891-1944), commander of the German forces in northern Africa during the early years of World War II.

[No text appeared under this poem title.]

Have you ever had a witch bloom like a highway
on your mouth? and turn your breathing to her
fancy? like a little car with blue headlights
passing forever in a dream?

I remember all those thousands of hours
that I spent in grade school watching the clock,
waiting for recess or lunch or to go home.
Waiting: for anything but school.
My teachers could easily have ridden with Jesse James
for all the time they stole from me.

Textual References
"Jesse James": American desparado (1847-1882).

Selected Reprints
A Legend of Horses Poems and Stories
No stated publisher, but possibly Pacific Red Car Press
No printing, place, or date information
5" x 9"; Printed wrappers; Stapled binding
Learn more

"High Schools Promote: Irresponsibility, Distortion, Schizophrenia, Racism, Chauvinism, Hate, Elitism, Linear Thought, Subordination, Militarism, Nationalism, Oligarchies, Loneliness, and other character disorders." Chicago: Chicago Area Draft Resisters, 197[?]: back panel.
Learn more

The Last Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools, edited by Steward Brand, Menlo Park, CA: Portola, Institute, p. 395, 1971.
Learn more

Acting out the place where the flowers die,
circling their graves with themselves,
your costume is perfect, you're on stage.

She tries to get things out of men
that she can't get because she's not
15% prettier.

If you will die for me,
I will die for you

and our graves will
be like two lovers washing
their clothes together
in a Laundromat.

If you will bring the soap,
I will bring the bleach.

Textual References
"Romeo and Juliet": See William Shakespeare's play of the same title (1597).

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

Have you ever felt like a wounded cow
halfway between an oven and a pasture?
walking in a trance toward a pregnant
seventeen-year-old housewife's
two-day-old cookbook?

Mrs. Myrtle Tate, movie projectionist
died Wednesday in San Francisco.
She was 66, retired.

We must remember again the absolute
excitement of the moon and think lyrically
about her death.

It is very important for our Twentieth Century
souls because she was "one of the few women
who worked as a movie projectionist."

Oh, honor this mothersisterbride
of magic lanterns with an endless waterfall of
visions.

Textual References
Mrs. Myrtle Tate, widow of Yancey S. Tate, died at San Francisco's Kaiser Foundation Hospital in September 1968, age sixty six. She was a long time member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Motion Picture Machine Operators of San Francisco Union, and, as noted in the obituary, "one of the few women who worked as a movie projectionist." The headline over her obituary in the San Francisco Examiner read, "Mrs. Myrtle Tate, Movie Projectionist." This is another example of found art finding its way into Brautigan's writing.

First Published
The San Francisco Public Library: A Publishing House, 5 Dec. 1968, p 2.
Three wet process legal-size photocopy pages (8.5" x 14"); stapled; self-produced by Victor Moscoso, Jack Thibeau, and Brautigan.
Learn more

There is something wrong
with this poem. Can you
find it?

First Published
Heliotrope, Summer 1969, n. pg.
Published in San Francisco, CA.
Learn more.

Love's not the way to treat a friend.
I wouldn't wish that on you. I don't
want to see your eyes forgotten
on a rainy day, lost in the endless purse
of those who can remember nothing.

Love's not the way to treat a friend.
I don't want to see you end up that way
with your body being poured like wounded
marble into the architecture of those who make
bridges out of crippled birds.

Love's not the way to treat a friend.
There are so many better things for you
than to see your feelings sold
as magic lanterns to somebody whose body
casts no light.

First Published
Rolling Stone, vol. 32, no. 3, May 1969, p. 29.
where it was originally titled "Not the Way."
Learn more

Recorded
"Paradise Bar and Grill"
Mad River
Capital Records
LISTEN to Brautigan read this poem accompanied by Mad River.

The net wt. of winter is 6.75 ozs.
and winter has a regular flavor
with Fluoristan to stop tooth decay.

A month ago I bought a huge tube
of Crest tooth paste and when I put it
in the bathroom, I looked at it
and said, "Winter."
December 4, 1968

I have Christmas dinner every year with Michael
and he always cooks abalone curry. It takes
a long time because it tastes so good and the afternoon
travels pleasantly by in his kitchen that is halfway
between India and Atlantis.

Textual References
"Michael": Michael McClure, poet and friend. Brautigan distills his friendship for McClure, and Christmas dinner experience, in this poem.

He wants to build you a house
out of your own bones, but
that's where you're living
any way!
The next time he calls
you answer the telephone with the
sound of your grandmother being
born. It was a twenty-three-hour
labor in 1894. He hangs
up.

Background
Written about a would-be biographer who trailed Brautigan during 1969.

Three sheep in a field
grazing beside a FOR SALE sign
are like pennies in the hand
of a child who will buy what
he wants to.

Forsaken, fucking in the cold,
eating each other, lost, runny noses,
complaining all the time like so
many people that we know.

Textual References
"Donner Party": A large group of emigrants that tried to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California during the harsh winter of 1846-1847. Few survived, and there were tales of violence and cannibalism.

Selected Reprints
The San Francisco Poets. Edited by David Meltzer. Ballantine Books, 1971, pp. 293-97, 304-305.
Learn more

Visions & Affiliations: A California Literary Time Line: Poets & Poetry: 1940-2005, Part 1: 1940-1980, Pantograph Press, p. 363, 2011
Learn more.

I like to think of Frankenstein as a huge keyhole
and the laboratory as the key that turns the lock
and everything that happens afterward as just the
lock turning.

Textual References
"Frankenstein": The name popularly attributed to the unnamed monster created by Dr. Victor Frankenstein in the novel by Mary Shelley (1818) and movie (1931).

Everybody wants to go to bed
with everybody else, they're
lined up for blocks, so I'll
go to bed with you. They won't
miss us.

It was snowing hard when we drove
into Los Alamos. There was a clinical feeling
to the town as if every man, woman and child
were a doctor. We shopped at the Safeway
and got a bag of groceries. A toddler
looked like a brain surgeon. He carefully
watched us shop at the exact place where he would
make his first incision.

Textual References
"Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Hiroshima, Japan": The atomic bomb was developed at Los Alamos and dropped on Hiroshima, 6 August 1945.

Background
In 1969, Brautigan and Valerie Estestraveled together to New York, New York, where Brautigan signed contracts with his new agent, Helen Brann, and his new publisher, Seymour Lawrence. Along the way they stopped in New Mexico to visit Robert Creeley. While in New Mexico, Brautigan, Estes, and Creeley visited the Los Alamos Research Laboratories. The visit inspired Brautigan's poem.

We age in darkness like wood
and watch our phantoms change
their clothes
of shingles and boards
for a purpose that can only be
described as wood.

First Published
Poetry, vol. cxv, no. 1, Oct. 1969, p. 30.
Published by Modern Poetry Association, Chicago, IL
Learn more

Selected Reprints
Poetry, vol. cxlv, no. 3, Dec. 1984, p. 178.
Published by Modern Poetry Association, Chicago, IL
where it appeared under the heading "Richard Brautigan 1934-1984" as a memorial tribute.
Learn more

He'd sell a rat's asshole
to a blindman for a wedding
ring.

Men are walking on the moon today,
planting their footsteps as if they were
zucchini on a dead world
while over 3,000,000 people starve to death
every year on a living one.
Earth July 20, 1969

Textual References
"Jules Verne": French adventure writer (1828-1905), author of From Earth to the Moon(1865). "July 20, 1969" is the date of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, the first by humans. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon's surface. Brautigan saw, and was inspired by televised images while watching the landing with Valerie Estes and friends Fritzi and Michael Drooth, at their San Francisco apartment.

Selected Reprints
The San Francisco Poets. Edited by David Meltzer. Ballantine Books, 1971, pp. 293-97, 304-305.
Learn more

Visions & Affiliations: A California Literary Time Line: Poets & Poetry: 1940-2005, Part 1: 1940-1980, Pantograph Press, p. 362, 2011
Learn more.

She sleeps this very evening in Greenbrook Castle
without the comfort of husband,
and what she knows is what she dreams. He isn't dead
and he isn't alive,
and the crack of light beneath the door is like the tail
of a cat as she paces in her room.

She sleeps this very evening in Greenbrook Castle
without the comfort of husband,
and what she knows is what she dreams. He isn't dead
and he isn't alive,
and the light in her window is like a wedding ring
shining to the dark and distant woods.

She sleeps this very evening in Greenbrook Castle
without the comfort of husband,
and what she knows is what she dreams. He isn't dead
and he isn't alive,
and the light that reflects her golden hair is the answer
to her marriage and the children of her prayers.

Background
According to Keith Abbott, Brautigan, in early 1968, inspired by the collaboration between Michael McClure and Janis Joplin on the song "Oh Lord, Won't You Buy Me A Mercedes Benz," gave Joplin a copy of "The Horse That Had a Flat Tire" and "She Sleeps This Very Evening in Greenbrook Castle" hoping she would use it as the basis for a song (Abbott71). Joplin's song "Mercedes Benz," although drawing from McClure's line "Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz," was actually written in collaboration with Bob Neuwirth, road manager for Bob Dylan during the English tour filmed in "Don't Look Back," and was included on Joplin's album Pearl, released in 1971, post-humously, following her death in 1970. Michael McClure collaborated with Bobby Womack to write the song "Trust Me," included on the same album.

For Gary Snyder

There is a motorcycle
in New Mexico.

Textual References
"Gary Snyder": American poet (1930- ). Written as an improvised Zen tribute to Snyder during an evening of drinking in early March 1968. Brautigan was to travel to New Mexico in six days and perhaps this influenced his selection of place for the motorcycle.

If you love a statue start a mirror.
Your friends will admire you.
If you love a mirror start a statue.
Make room for new friends.

Feasting and drinking went on far into the night
but in the end we went home alone to console ourselves
which seems to be what so many things are all about
like the branches of a tree just after the wind
stops blowing.

[No text appeared under this poem title.]

Hinged to forgetfulness like a door,
she slowly closed out of sight,
and she was the woman that I loved,
but too many times she slept like
a mechanical deer in my caresses,
and I ached in the metal silence
of her dreams.

I have a 75 watt, glare free, long life
Harmony House light bulb in my toilet.
I have been living in the same apartment
for over two years now
and that bulb just keeps burning away.
I believe that it is fond of me.

Just because people love your mind,
doesn't mean they have to have your body,
too.

"Butch didn't die in Bolivia. He came
home to Utah—I saw him after he got back.
The Sundance Kid was killed in Bolivia
and it grieved Butch to leave him there."

Textual References
"Butch Cassidy": Ianthe Brautigan notes that her father owned a copy of William Goldman's script for the popular 1969 movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Feedback from Daniel Buck
"I was poking around the Internet today and came upon Brautigan's poem, "The History of Bolivia." Don't know if you know the backstory. The entire poem is a quote Butch Cassidy's sister, Lula Parker Betenson, gave to a Women's News Service reporter, Rebecca Morehouse, during a 1969 interview with Betenson in New York City while Morehouse was attending the premier of [the movie] Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The story, "Butch Cassidy 'Nice' Bandit," was published in a number of small city newspapers, like The Lima News (Ohio, 19 October 1069), The High Point Eneterprise (North Carolina, 24 October 1969), The Burlington Times-News (North Carolina, 10 October 1969), The Daily Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica, 15 October 1969), and The Arizona Republic (Phoenix, 9 October 1969).

"Betenson always contended that her brother did not die in Bolivia, but returned home and visited her once, in 1925. Most historians, myself included, do not believe her. She created the tale of Butch's return because she wanted to tart up her book, Butch Cassidy, My Brother (1975), and stick a thumb in Hollywood's eye, which had made buckets of money off her brother's life.

"In the 1969 interview she said that Sundance died in Bolivia, Butch grieved for him, etc. In her book, written in 1975, she reversed herself, saying that Sundance survived the Boliva shootout, that Butch ran into his girlfriend, Etta Place, in a Mexico City bar, and she took him to Sundance elsewhere in the city (Butch Cassidy, My Brother, 186-187). Yes, of all the gin joints . . .. Those of us who pay attention to this minutia consider the collision between her 1969 quote and her 1975 book a tell, a clue that she was making it up as she went along; that she really had no idea what happened to Butch and Sundance. The best evidence is that Butch and Sundance died in a shootout with the military in Bolivia in November 1908.

"Anyway, I like the poem. "The History of Bolivia." Butch and Sundance is what most Americans think of when they hear the word 'Bolivia.'"
— Daniel Buck. Email to John F. Barber, 29 September 2012.

See Buck's website, Digging Up Butch and Sundance.

He taught me to love him and called me his flower

An old woman clutches a bagful of groceries
to her chest. A loaf of white bread sticks
out the top. She has forgotten to put her
food stamps away. They're still in her hand.

Propelled by portals whose only shame
is a zeppelin's shadow crossing a field
of burning bathtubs,
I ask myself: There must be more to life
than this?

Selected Reprints
The San Francisco Poets. Edited by David Meltzer. Ballantine Books, 1971, pp. 293-97, 304-305.
Learn more

Clad in garments like a silver disease
you parade around the house. You're quite happy.
The lights are out. The shades are down.
It's your own business.

Lions are growing like yellow roses on the wind
and we turn gracefully in the medieval garden
of their roaring blossoms.
Oh, I want to turn.
Oh, I am turning.
Oh, I have turned.
Thank you.

There is so much lost
and so much gained in
these words.

Where I come from it's just
another carrot in the patch.
Where do you come from,
stranger?

Textual References
"Casablanca": A seaport city in Morocco and title of the famous 1942 film starring Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957).

[No text appeared under this poem title.]

At the earliest dark answer
she turns her hair toward
the door.
She'll learn, she'll learn
that life is more than a
closing comb.

For Valerie

All girls should have a poem
written for them even if
we have to turn this God-damn world
upside down to do it.
New Mexico
March 16, 1969

Textual References
"Valerie": Valerie Estes.

First Published
The Free You, vol. 3, no. 6, May 1969, p. 45.
Published in Menlo Park, California, by Midpeninsula Free University. Edited by Fred Nelson, Jon Buckley, Ed McClanahan, and others.
Learn more

Selected Reprints
One Lord, One Faith, One Cornbread. Eds. Fred Nelson and Ed McClanahan. Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1973.
Learn more

We stopped at perfect days
and got out of the car.
The wind glanced at her hair.
It was as simple as that.
I turned to say something—

Chosen by beauty to be a handmaiden of the stars,
she passes like a silver brush
across the lens of a telescope.
She brushes the stars, the galaxies
and the light-years into the order that
we know them.

Thinking hard about you
I got onto the bus
and paid 30 cents car fare
and asked the driver for
two transfers
before discovering that I
was alone.

Do you think of me
as often as I think
of you?

There is darkness on your lantern
and pumpkins in your wind,
and Oh, they clutter up your mind
with their senseless bumping
while your heart is like a sea gull
frozen into a long distance telephone
call.

I'd like to take the darkness
off your lantern and change the pumpkins
into sky fields of ordered comets
and disconnect the refrigerator telephone
that frightens your heart into standing
still.

The gunman holds the wind
in his hand.
Autumn and spring pass like robberies
across his eyes.
He doesn't blink while one stops leaves
and the other starts them.
The gunman is a friend to the changing
of the seasons.
He holds the wind in his hand.

He's howling in the pines
at the edge of your fingerprints.

Walking on crow eggs, mama,
listening to the shells break
like cars being parked on
asphalt.

My telephone rang in the middle of the night,
but I didn't answer it. It rang and rang
and rang and SHUT UP! and rang as if it were
possessed.
I always figure that good news doesn't travel
in the middle of the night, so I didn't answer
the telephone.
I let it go to hell. I was right, too.
It was somebody calling to tell me that Kennedy
had been hit.

Textual References
"June 5, 1968": The day Robert Kennedy, brother to President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in Los Angeles, California.

Lemon Lard: with your odd snowshoes
and your ability to remember dates,
you're all that you'll ever want to
be.

Just an ordinary girl, 118
pounds, chipped front tooth, cute,
born in Reno, Nevada, a student
at SF State, she wants candles
married to her womb by the color
of a telescopic saint, so that all
her children will be adventures
in light.

Fragile, fading 37,
she wears her wedding ring like a trance
and stares straight down at an empty coffee cup
as if she were looking into the mouth of a dead bird.
Dinner is over. Her husband has gone to the toilet.
He will be back soon and then it will be her turn
to go to the toilet.

Selected Reprints
"Fragile, Fading 37/A Poem." Kaleidescope-Madison, vol. 2, no. 19, 17 Sep. 1970, p. 7.
Published biweekly; Box 5457, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53701.
Learn more

Snowflaked as if by an invisible polar bear
—unlucky bastard,
you're sitting on the fender of her kisses
while she drives the car down into the
perfect center of ice.

I feel so bad today
that I want to write a poem.
I don't care: any poem, this
poem.

Always spend a penny
as if you were spending a
dollar
and always spend a dollar
as if you were spending
a wounded eagle and always
spend a wounded eagle as if
you were spending the very
sky itself.

First Published
Journal for the Protection of All Beings, no. 3, 1969, n. pg.
Published by City Lights Books, San Francisco, California. 6" x 10.25."
Learn more

In a room that knows your death
a closet freezes like a postage stamp.
A coat, a dress is hanging there.

It's a late starting dawn that breathes my vision,
inhales and exhales the sound of waking birds
and pokes ten miles of cold gray sky at a deer
standing alone in a meadow.

Selected Reprints
Postcard Poems. Edited by Paul B. Janeczko. Bradbury Press, 1979, p. 46.

A witch and a 6 pack of Double Century Ale
that's what I want to do on a rainy winter night
at her place.

He wants to fly,
sitting next to me on the bus,
reading a copy of Flight Handbook.

He has one of the largest
thumbnails I've ever seen.

As he dreams of bird-like mannerisms,
I stare at this thumb.

Mouths that kissed
in the hot ashes of Pompeii
are returning
and eyes that could adore their beloved only
in the fires of Pompeii
are returning
and locked bodies that squirmed in ecstasy
in the lava of Pompeii
are returning
and lovers who found their perfect passion
in the death of Pompeii
are returning,
and they're letting themselves in
again with the names of your sons
and your daughters.

Textual References
"Pompeii": Italian city destroyed by the sudden eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79. Erotic frescoes of the type Brautigan describes have been excavated.

First Published
San Francisco Express Times, vol. 1, no. 27, 24 July 1968, p. 7.
Learn more.

Selected Reprints
Sun, no. 9, 7 Aug. 1968.
Five unbound 8.5" x 11" sheets, folded for mailing.
Learn more.

A transparent bridge across
the elbow of a dead duck
beckons, friends, like a boiled
radio station
toward a better understanding
of yourself in these crisis-ridden
times.

Selected Reprints
The San Francisco Poets. Ed. David Meltzer. New York: Ballantine Books, 1971. 293-97, 304-305.
Learn more

Pretty: except for the
puncture bruises on her
arm. Also, she's a little
thin.

The alarm-colored shadow of a frightened ant
wants to make friends with you, learn all about
your childhood, cry together, come live with
you.

That's where I
see your face,
baby, on a tank
all around the
cannon.

33-1/3 sized
lions are roaring at the black gates of Fame
with jaws that look like record company courtesans
brushing their teeth
with would-be rock and roll stars
in motel bathrooms
with a perfect view of hot car roofs
in the just-signed-up
afternoon.

Hilda,
I keep wanting to write a poem
in praise of your beautiful energy
and because I like the Virgo grace
of your ways.
Funky as it is: I'm sorry,
forgive me, I guess this is
that poem.

Textual References
"Hilda": Hilda Hoffman, the woman who appears with Brautigan on the front cover of In Watermelon Sugar.

A lyrical want, an endocrine gland fancy,
a telescope that I thought had no thorns
have led me to a pain that I cannot pronounce.
It gathers around me like a convention of translators
for a language that does not exist with all those meetings
to attend.

Textual References
"Endocrine gland": A gland in the human body that, like the thyroid or pituitary gland, produces secretions that are distributed throughout the body via the bloodstream.

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.

Slow/dark . . . black/seeming
approach:
a plant by an open window.

Drinking wine this afternoon
I realize the days are getting
longer.

Too many lifetimes like this one, right?
Hungover, surrounded by general goofiness,
lonely, can't get it up, I feel just like
a pile of bleached cat shit.

Forget love
I want to die
in your yellow
hair.

In her sweetness where she folds my wounds
there is a flower that bees cannot afford.
It is too rich for them and would change
their wings into operas and all their honey
into the lonesome maps of a nonexistent
California county.
When she has finished folding all my wounds
she puts them away in a dresser where the
drawers smell like the ghost of a bicycle.
Afterwards I rage at her: demanding that her
affections always be constant to my questions.

Selected Reprints
The San Francisco Poets. Edited by David Meltzer. Ballantine Books, 1971, pp. 293-97, 304-305.
Learn more

I'm sitting here (at a cafe) thinking
about writing a poem. What will I write
about? I don't know. I just feel like it
when suddenly a young man in a hurry
walks up to me and says, "Can I use your
pen?"
There's an envelope in his hand. "I want
to address this." He takes my pen
and addresses the envelope. He's very serious
about it. He's really using the
pen.

All the secrets of past tense have just come my way,
but I still don't know what I'm going to do
next.

Oh well, call it a
life.

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.

[No text appeared under this poem title.]

Pity the morning light that refuses to wait for dawn
and rushes foolishly with its mercury pride to challenge
a responsibility that knows only triumph and gently bends
the stars to fit its will and cleans up afterwards all
that poor wasted light, leaving not a trace behind.

Flying East today first to Chicago,
then North Carolina snow makes me sad
below in the mountains of the West.
It is a white sadness that rises
from California, Nevada, Utah
and Colorado to visit the airplane,
to sit here beside me like a snowy 1943
map of my childhood.

As the bruises fade, the lightning aches.
Last week, making love, you bit me.
Now the blue and dark have gone
and yellow bruises grow toward pale daffodils,
then paler to become until my body
is all my own and what that ever got me.

Background
Written for Valerie Estes in celebration of their robust sexual relations.

Selected Reprints
The San Francisco Poets. Edited by David Meltzer. Ballantine Books, 1971, pp. 293-97, 304-305.
Learn more

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

Visions & Affiliations: A California Literary Time Line: Poets & Poetry: 1940-2005, Part 1: 1940-1980, Pantograph Press, p. 363, 2011
Learn more.

I am summoned by a door
but forgotten by the knock
and left standing here alone
in a long silent hall, like
a marble intestine, that knows
my name.

At last our bodies coincide.
I'll bet you thought this
would never happen. Neither
did I. It's a pleasant
surprise.

Let us please learn new words that mean as much as direction:
wife.

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.

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Reviews

Reviews for The Return of the Rivers 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.

"Roddan, Brooks. Los Angeles Free Press, 29 May 1970"

Roddan, Brooks. "Come Home, Richard Brautigan." Los Angeles Free Press, vol. 7, no. 22, 29 May 1970, p. 36.

Likens Brautigan to Rod McKuen whose sentimental poetry was popular in the 1970s. Calls Rommel Drives On Deep into Egypt "a cloying, cute, half-assed collection of rather uninteresting tripe." READ this review.

"Haroldson, Thomas. The Fifth Estate, vol. 5, no. 5 (109), 9-22 July 1970"

Haroldson, Thomas. "Rommel Limps On Deep into Nowhere." The Fifth Estate [Detroit], vol. 5, no. 5 (109), 9-22 July 1970, p. 16.

Says Rommel Drives On Deep into Egypt suffers in comparison to The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Diaster. READ this review orVIEW the entire magazine online.

"Spector, Robert D. Saturday Review, 26 Dec. 1970"

Spector, Robert D. "Betwixt Tradition and Innovation." Saturday Review, 26 Dec. 1970, pp. 24-25, 50-51.

Reviews several works of poetry saying the "continuing struggle between tradition and innovation" continues to produce good poetry in "an altogether different kind of poetic climate" (24). Suggests that Brautigan, however, failed to produce good poetry. The full text of the reference to Brautigan reads, "But failure—as well as success—is just as possible in poems that mock the conventions. Sometimes witty, always fashionably anti-Establishment, Richard Brautigan's Rommel Drives On Deep into Egypt comes off as a game children play."

"Horwitz, Carey A. Library Journal Book Review, 1970"

Horwitz, Carey A. "Brautigan, Richard." Library Journal Book Review 1970. Edited by Judith Serebnick. Bowker Company, 1970, p. 442.

The full text of this review reads, "A witch and a 6 pack of Double Century ale/ that's what I want to do on a rainy winter night/ at her place." Does one review that? Does one call that poetry? Labels can be attached, if that's really important: mature Rod McKuen-Leonard Cohen-etcetera school of neo-Beat hippie-cryptic poetry; projectivist, Black Mountain influence; Cummings constructions with a Whitmanesque self-consciousness and vulnerability. And the restrained critical faculty will pronounce much of the verse poorly conceived and sophomoric, though interspersed with flashes of true lyricism and emotive power. Fine. Homage has been paid to Kultur. Now, throw all that garbage away; it will only be dead weight where Brautigan is taking us. For, like his fiction (Trout Fishing in American, The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster and In Watermelon Sugar, LJ, April 15, p. 1500), this is, not poetry for the ages, but a set of communications with this age, providing emotional correlatives that will be felt and identified with by those who can. And that is all. No bids for universality or immortality. Just a few words, a few experiences for now, if you want them."

Reprinted
Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 1.edited by Carolyn Riley. Gale Research Company, 1973, pp. 44-45.
Virginia Quarterly Review, no. 46, Autumn 1970, p. R134.

"Rose, Kate. Minnesota Review, vol. 10, no. 3-4, 1970"

Rose, Kate. "The Grand Penny Tour: Brautigan's 'Rommel Drives On Deep into Egypt'." Minnesota Review, vol. 10, no. 3-4, 1970, pp. 115-116.

Says Brautigan is an entertainer, rather than a poet, presenting a series of one-time quips, enough of which are successful to make the show come off, one way or the other and so, "cannot be aspiring to poetdom as it is commonly conceived these days. . . . Sometimes I just can't see his images, and given the pace of the book, am unwilling to stop for them . . .. Ideas, tough, involving ideas, are not Brautigan's specialty. He tends toward gestures and insights and words; but anyone who's been afraid of poetry because of its formality, glumness, bookish references, obscure, private visions, long words or politics can read this book. The man is not writing to poets or his educated peers; he may be writing instant culture, but he will be read." READ this review.

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

"Pritchard, William H. Hudson Review, vol. 32, no. 3, 1970"

Pritchard, William H. "Shags and Poets." Hudson Review, vol. XXIII, no. 3, Autumn 1970, pp. 563-577.

Says Brautigan, in Rommel Drives On Deep into Egypt, demonstrates how American poets are increasingly using vivid fundamental imagery. Notes examples from the book's contents. Concludes by saying, "Brautigan has already attained mythical status so must be something more than what used to be called a wiseguy, but he's at least that, and a clever one."

The full text of this review reads, "In an as yet unwritten essay on contemporary American poets I plan to discuss their increasingly vivid use of fundamental imagery, as in Richard Brautigan's new volume:

"He'd sell a rat's asshole
to a blindman for a wedding
ring."

or in the title poem

"Rommel is dead.
His army has joined the quicksand legions
of history where battle is always
a metal echo saluting a rusty shadow.
His tanks are gone.
How's your ass?"

There is also a shorter one from which sprang the Women's Liberation Movement:

"She tries to get things out of men
that she can't get because she's not
15% prettier."

Brautigan has already attained mythical status so must be something more than what used to be called a wiseguy, but he's at least that, and a clever one. Although his final poem, an apostrophe to "Beautiful high-grade fucking" puts forth a lyric value evidently not subject to satiric contemplation.

"Ashley, Nickie Guerilla, vol 1, no. 19, 1 March 1971"

Ashley, Nickie. "Books." Guerilla vol 1., no. 19, 1 March 1971 [renamed Toronto Free Press, Toronto, Canada], p. 19.

This over-the-top review says, "With this talent, Brautigan ranks potentially with writers such as James Joyce and Dylan Thomas."
READ this reviewor VIEW the entire magazine online atthe Connexions website.

"Lally, Michael. Great Speckled Bird, vol. 4, no. 26, 28 June 1971"

Lally, Michael. "Brautigan: Caught in Success?" Great Speckled Bird, ol. 4, no. 26, 28 June 1971, p. 11.

A scathing review, with a drawing by Frank Holyfield.

READ this review or or VIEW the entire magazine onlinethe Georgia State website.

"Williams, Jonathan. Parnassus, vol. 1, Fall-Winter 1972"

Williams, Jonathan. "'Anyway, All I Ever Wanted to be was a Poet.' Said Leon Uris, with a Smile, as We Strode Together into the Vomitorium..." Parnassus, vol. 1, Fall/Winter 1972, pp. 94-105.

Reviews In Someone's Shadow by Rod McKuen, A Weeping Eye Can Never See by Lois Wyse, Transformations by Ann Sexton, The Gambit Book of Popular Verse edited and introduced by Geoffrey Grigson, and Rommel Drives On Deep into Egypt by Brautigan. Calls Brautigan's poetry "goofy" and "too thin," without substance.

The portion of this review regarding Brautigan reads, "Richard Brautigan. There is less here than meets the eye. So now it's time to lose votes with the Bolinas Crowd that thinks Richard is right on. Richards tend to be peculiar and losers by name. There were those English kings; there was Herr Wagner and Herr Straus; there's one named Nixon and one Mayor of Chicago; there were two fucked-up Richards at Black Mountain; I had a personal-Richard who had me in endless despair. One could make an interesting list. Anyway, Richards seldom give much away. Brautigan's as goofy as McKuen—another child of the Muses, with a sweet smile. He's read some Patchen, he's read some Creeley. He writes for kids who eat macrobiotic food and (don't) know where it is. Like I say, you'd starve to death on these no-cal poems. E.g.:

"April 7, 1969

I feel so bad today
that I want to write a poem. I don't care: any poem, this poem."

Or, "Nice Ass"
There is so much lost
and so much gained in these words.

Or, "Negative Clank"
He'd sell a rat's asshole
to a blindman for a wedding ring.

I'd like to say, Gee, wow, oo-ee-oo, landsakes, that's just very nice. I feel more like Dr. Benway about to operate: What son of a bitch has cut the plasma with Sani-Flush?" It's too thin. Off to a Vic Tanney gym, words! And a few months at the knee of Mr. Rexroth wouldn't hurt you either. Then, if you insist on coming on quite so simple, do it in a way that might interest people who have listened to the beautiful clarities of Scarlatti and Schubert beyond the Bay Area and the sunshine campuses.

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

"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 DisasterandRommel 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 that in Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt Brautigan "continues his experiments with similes and metaphors, 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." READ this review.

"Ashley, Nickie Guerilla, vol 1, no. 19, 1 March 1971"

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

"Haroldson, Thomas. The Fifth Estate, vol. 5, no. 5 (109), 9-22 July 1970"

"Horwitz, Carey A. Library Journal Book Review, 1970"

"Lally, Michael. Great Speckled Bird, vol. 4, no. 26, 28 June 1971"

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

"Pritchard, William H. Hudson Review, vol. 32, no. 3, 1970"

"Roddan, Brooks. Los Angeles Free Press, 29 May 1970"

"Rose, Kate. Minnesota Review, vol. 10, no. 3-4, 1970"

"Spector, Robert D. Saturday Review, 26 Dec. 1970"

"Williams, Jonathan. Parnassus, vol. 1, Fall-Winter 1972"

In Translation

This work has been translated into 3 different languages in at least 6 editions.
For details on an edition, click on a link below.
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Richard Brautigan > Rommel Drives On Deep into Egypt (original) (raw)

Publication

A11.1: 1st USA Hardback Edition, Seymore Lawrence/Delacourt Press, 1970

Covers

Advance Reader Copy

A11.2: Delta Trade Paperback Edition, Delta/Dell, 1970

Covers

Known Printings

A11.3: 1st UK Editions, Picador-Pan Books, 1973

Covers

A11.4: Mass Market Paperback Edition, Laurel/Dell, 1973

Cover

A11.5: Delacorte Paperback Edition, 1979

Cover

Background

Dedication

Beverly Allen

Contents

Reviews

Roddan, Brooks. "Come Home, Richard Brautigan." Los Angeles Free Press, vol. 7, no. 22, 29 May 1970, p. 36.

Haroldson, Thomas. "Rommel Limps On Deep into Nowhere." The Fifth Estate [Detroit], vol. 5, no. 5 (109), 9-22 July 1970, p. 16.

Spector, Robert D. "Betwixt Tradition and Innovation." Saturday Review, 26 Dec. 1970, pp. 24-25, 50-51.

Horwitz, Carey A. "Brautigan, Richard." Library Journal Book Review 1970. Edited by Judith Serebnick. Bowker Company, 1970, p. 442.

Rose, Kate. "The Grand Penny Tour: Brautigan's 'Rommel Drives On Deep into Egypt'." Minnesota Review, vol. 10, no. 3-4, 1970, pp. 115-116.

Pritchard, William H. "Shags and Poets." Hudson Review, vol. XXIII, no. 3, Autumn 1970, pp. 563-577.

Ashley, Nickie. "Books." Guerilla vol 1., no. 19, 1 March 1971 [renamed Toronto Free Press, Toronto, Canada], p. 19.

Lally, Michael. "Brautigan: Caught in Success?" Great Speckled Bird, ol. 4, no. 26, 28 June 1971, p. 11.

Williams, Jonathan. "'Anyway, All I Ever Wanted to be was a Poet.' Said Leon Uris, with a Smile, as We Strode Together into the Vomitorium..." Parnassus, vol. 1, Fall/Winter 1972, pp. 94-105.

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.

In Translation

Search