Richard Brautigan > All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

Brautigan > All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

This node of the American Dust website (formerly Brautigan Bibliography and Archive) provides comprehensive information about Richard Brautigan's poetry collection All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. Published in 1967, this collection of seventeen 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

Only Previously Unpublished Alphabetical Order Descending Order

Unless noted, the thirty-two poems collected in All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace were first published in this volume. All were collected and reprinted in The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster.
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.

I go to bed in Los Angeles thinking
about you.

Pissing a few moments ago
I looked down at my penis
affectionately.

Knowing it has been inside
you twice today makes me
feel beautiful.

3 A.M.
January 15, 1967

Background
Written during Brautigan's poet-in-residency at the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, California, 17-26 January 1967. Brautigan and Andrew Hoyem drove from San Francisco to Los Angeles on Sunday, 15 January 1967 in order to spend the following ten days at Cal Tech. Arriving at night, they were housed in the guest suite at Ricketts House on the Cal Tech campus where they enjoyed a late night party. As he recounts, at three in the morning, Brautigan remembered his passionate morning with then girlfriend Michaela Blake-Grand.

First Published
The Communication Company, April 1967
Mimeographed letter-sized (8.5" x 11") broadside.
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She's mending the rain with her hair.
She's turning the darkness on.
Glue / switch!
That's all I have to report.

Background
Retitled "November 24" in The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster table of contents, although the poem itself retains the original title.

Selected Reprints
Four Poems. Synaesthesia Press: Tempe, Arizona, 2000.
Learn more.

San Francisco Express Times, vol. 1, no. 49, December 24, 1968: 8-9.
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The Thunder City Press Broadside Series, No. 5 Richard Brautigan 8 Poems. Thunder City Press, February 1976.
11" x 17" broadside.
Learn more

ZAP!
unlaid / for 20 days

my sexual image
isn't worth a shit.

If I were dead
I couldn't attract
a female fly.

Selected Reprints
The Thunder City Press Broadside Series, No. 5 Richard Brautigan 8 Poems. Thunder City Press, February 1976.
11" x 17" broadside.
Learn more

I'm sitting in a cafe,
drinking a Coke.

A fly is sleeping
on a paper napkin.

I have to wake him up,
so I can wipe my glasses.

There's a pretty girl I want to look at.

First Published
O'er, no. 2, December 1966, pp. 107-109.
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Selected Reprints
Totem, March 1966. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, p. 21.
Learn more.

Four Poems. Synaesthesia Press: Tempe, Arizona, 2000.
Learn more.

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

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 sixteen poems collected in The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster, including this one.
LISTEN to Brautigan read these poems.

Butcher, baker, candlestick maker,
anybody can get VD,
including those you love.

Please see a doctor
if you think you've got it.

You'll feel better afterwards
and so will those you love.

First Published
The Communication Company, April 1967.
8.5" x 11" mimeographed broadside.
Learn more.

Selected Reprints
Oz, no. 35, [London], May 1971
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Background
This poem is about veneral disease, urging anyone who thinks they have it so see a doctor. Inspiration for the poem may have come from Brautigan's possible treatment from Dr. Alex L. Finkle, a San Francisco urologist, for veneral disease in December 1964, while living with Janice Meissner at 533 Divisadero Street. Published as a broadside it is typical of the efforts of the Communication Company to inform the Haight-Ashbury community.

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.

This poem was found written on a paper bag by Richard Brautigan in a laundromat in San Francisco. The author is unknown.

By accident, you put
Your money in my
Machine (#4)
By accident, I put
My money in another
Machine (#6)
On purpose, I put
Your clothes in the
Empty machine full
Of water and no
Clothes

It was lonely.

I sit here
on the perfect end
of a star,

watching light
pour itself toward
me.

The light pours
itself through
a small hole
in the sky.

I'm not very happy,
but I can see
how things are
faraway.

Selected Reprints
The Thunder City Press Broadside Series, No. 5 Richard Brautigan 8 Poems. Thunder City Press, February 1976.
11" x 17" broadside.
Learn more

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

First Published
The Communication Company, 1967.
8.5" x 11" mimeographed broadside
Learn more

Selected Reprints
The Thunder City Press Broadside Series, No. 5 Richard Brautigan 8 Poems. Thunder City Press, February 1976.
11" x 17" broadside.
Learn more

Recorded
"Listening to Richard Brautigan." Harvest Records.
Brautigan's poem read by Bob Prescot, Valerie Estes, Michael McClure, Margot Patterson Doss, Bruce Conner, Michaela Blake-Grand, Donald Merriam Allen/David Schaff, Ianthe Brautigan, Imogen Cunningham, Herb Caen, Betty Kirkendall, Peter Berg, Alan Stone, Antonio, Donald Merriam Allen, Cynthia Harwood, and Price Dunn.
LISTEN to Brautigan's friends read this poem.

David Fremas has prepared a video visualizing the speakers in this recording and their emotions. WATCH the trailer.

For Marcia

I lie here in a strange girl's apartment.
She has poison oak, a bad sunburn
and is unhappy.
She moves about the place
like distant gestures of solemn glass.

She opens and closes things.
She turns the water on,
and she turns the water off.

All the sounds she makes are faraway.
They could be in a different city.
It is dusk and people are staring
out the windows of that city.
Their eyes are filled with the sounds
of what she is doing.

Background
Marcia Pacaud, "Marcia," from Montreal, Canada, appeared in the photograph on the front cover of The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster.

Selected Reprints
Aura Literary/Arts Review. Thunder City Press, 1977(?).
11" x 17" broadside.
Learn more.

I don't know what it is,
but I distrust myself
when I start to like a girl
a lot.

It makes me nervous.
I don't say the right things
or perhaps I start
     to examine,
          evaluate,
               compute
     what I am saying.

If I say, "Do you think it's going to rain?"
and she says, "I don't know,"
I start thinking: Does she really like me?

In other words
I get a little creepy.

A friend of mine once said,
"It's twenty times better to be friends
with someone
than it is to be in love with them."

I think he's right and besides,
it's raining somewhere, programming flowers
and keeping snails happy.
That's all taken care of.

BUT
if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like,
"Do you think it's going to rain?"
and I say, "It beats me,"
and she says, "Oh,"
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky
I think: Thank God, it's you, baby, this time
instead of me.

First Published
Hollow Orange, no. 4 1967, n. pg.
Published at 642 Shrader Street, San Francisco, California by Cranium Press
Edited by Clifford Burke
String tied wrappers
Learn more

Selected Reprints
The American Literary Anthology. Third Annual Collection. Edited by George Plimpton and Peter Ardery. Viking, 1970, pp. 384-385.
Learn more
Corrected version

The American Literary Anthology. Second Annual Collection. Edited by George Plimpton and Peter Ardery. Random House, 1969, p. 56.
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Omitted last thirteen lines.

Man: In the Poetic Mode, Vol. 3. Edited by Joy Zwiegler. McDougal, Littell & Company, 1970
Learn more

For Jeff Sheppard

No publication
No money
No star
No fuck

A friend came over to the house
a few days ago and read one of my poems.
He came back today and asked to read the
same poem over again. After he finished
reading it, he said, "It makes me want
to write poetry."

Background
Jeff Sheppard was a poet friend of Brautigan's. Their work appeared together in Hollow Orange. See the poems "Comets," "It's Raining in Love," and "Nine Things."

We are a coast people
There is nothing but ocean out beyond us.
—Jack Spicer

I sit here dreaming
long thoughts of California

at the end of a November day
below a cloudy twilight
near the Pacific

listening to the Mamas and the Papas
THEY'RE GREAT

singing a song about breaking
somebody's heart and digging it!

I think I'll get up
and dance around the room.

Here I go!

Textual References
"Jack Spicer": American poet (1925-1965) and Brautigan's mentor; the quotation is from the first of "Ten Poems for Downbeat," in The Collected Books of Jack Spicer. Edited by Robin Blaser. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1975. 263.

"The Mamas and the Papas": Popular folk-rock group of the Sixties; the song is probably the exuberant "I Saw Her Again" (1966). Brautigan's first stanza may allude to their first big hit, "California Dreamin'" (1965).

Selected Reprints
A First Reader of Contemporary American Poetry. Edited by Patrick Gleason. Merrill, 1969, pp. 23-26.
Learn more Hollow Orange 4 1967, n. pg.

It's not quite cold enough
to go borrow some firewood
from the neighbors.

Selected Reprints
Volta, no. 2, March 2009
Limited edition of approximately 150 copies; 50 laid into Volta the rest given away to friends of the press.
Published by Jim Camp, Synaesthesia Press.
Learn more.

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

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

Selected Reprints
Four Poems. Synaesthesia Press: Tempe, Arizona, 2000.
Learn more.

I changed her bedroom:
raised the ceiling four feet,
removed all of her things
(and the clutter of her life)
painted the walls white,
placed a fantastic calm
in the room,
a silence that almost had a scent,
put her in a low brass bed
with white satin covers,
and I stood there in the doorway
watching her sleep, curled up,
with her face turned away
from me.

Dance toward me, please, as
if you were a star
with light-years piled
on top of your hair,
smiling,

and I will dance toward you
as if I were darkness
with bats piled like a hat
on top of my head.

Selected Reprints
Aura Literary/Arts Review Thunder City Press, 1977(?).
11" x 17" broadside.
Learn more.

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

The Thunder City Press Broadside Series, No. 5 Richard Brautigan 8 Poems. Thunder City Press, February 1976.
11" x 17" broadside.
Learn more

The moon like:
mischievous bacon
crisps its desire

(while)

I harbor myself
toward two eggs
over easy.

Selected Reprints
Volta, no. 1, March 2000
Limited edition of approximately 150 copies; 50 laid into Volta the rest given away to friends of the press.
Published by Jim Camp, Synaesthesia Press.
Learn more.

Also appears as a separate, small broadside
Learn more.

My magic is down.
My spells mope around
the house like sick old dogs
with bloodshot eyes
watering cold wet noses.

My charms are in a pile
in the corner like the
dirty shirts of a summer fatman.

One of my potions died
last night in the pot.
It looks like a cracked
Egyptian tablecloth.

First Published
Beatitude vol. 18, either Dec. 1960 or early, 1961
Learn more.

Selected Reprints
Aura Literary/Arts Review. Thunder City Press, 1977(?).
11" x 17" broadside.
Learn more.

January 26, 1967
at 3:15 in the afternoon

Sitting here in Los Angeles
parked on a rundown residential
     back street,
staring up at the word
     HOLLYWOOD
written on some lonely mountains,
I'm listening very carefully
to rock and roll radio
     (Lovin' Spoonful)
     (Jefferson Airplane)
while people are slowly
putting out their garbage cans.

Textual References
"Lovin' Spoonful" and "Jefferson Airplane": Two popular rock groups of the time, from New York City and San Francisco, respectively.

Selected Reprints
The Thunder City Press Broadside Series, No. 5 Richard Brautigan 8 Poems. Thunder City Press, February 1976.
11" x 17" broadside.
Learn more

Magic is the color of the thing you wear
with a dragon for a button
and a lion for a lamp
with a carrot for a collar
and a salmon for a zipper.

Hey! You're turning me on: baby.
That's the way it's going down.

WOW!

For Susan

Last night (here) a long pretty girl
asked me to write a poem about Albion,
so she could put it in a black folder
that has albion printed nicely
in white on the cover.

I said yes. She's at the store now
getting something for breakfast.
I'll surprise her with this poem
when she gets back.

Background
Althea Susan Morgan and Brautigan first met Friday, 27 January 1967 in Isla Vista/Goleta, California, where Brautigan participated in a poetry reading at the Unicorn Book Shop. Morgan visited Brautigan in San Francisco several times and during one visit Brautigan wrote and dedicated the poem "Albion Breakfast" for Morgan. He typed, signed, and dated (24 March 1967) a copy for Morgan.

Although "albion" was often used as poetic reference to England, especially by the English Romantic poets, Morgan recalled a different genesis for this poem.

Feedback from Susan Morgan

On one of my visits to Richard at his apartment on Geary Street [probably late January], where he lived without a refrigerator, he wrote Albion Breakfast. The day before, we had been walking through the City and I had found, in the gutter, a pile of sales catalogs for high-end bathroom fixtures. I took one of the folders from the pile because it was so elegant. It said Albion on a solid black folder. I asked Richard if he would write me a poem to put in it. The next morning while I went to the grocery store to buy something to eat for breakfast he wrote the poem.
— Althea Susan Morgan. Email to John F. Barber, 4 December 2005.

Morgan lived in Santa Barbara, California, where Brautigan visited her and wrote another poem, "The Sitting Here, Standing Here Poem," for her.

Morgan and Brautigan exchanged letters about this poem and other topics.

Erik Weber photographed Brautigan and Morgan in Brautigan's Geary Street apartment in March 1967. LEARN more

There are comets
that flash through
our mouths wearing
the grace
of oceans and galaxies.

     God knows,
     we try to do the best
     we can.

There are comets
connected to chemicals
that telescope
down out tongues
to burn out against
the air.

I know
we do.

There are comets
that laugh at us
from behind our teeth
wearing the clothes
of fish and birds.

We try.

First Published
Hollow Orange 4 1967, n. pg.
Published at 642 Shrader Street, San Francisco, California, by Cranium Press. Edited by Clifford Burke
String tied wrappers
Learn more

Selected Reprints
Aura Literary/Arts Review. Thunder City Press, 1977(?).
11" x 17" broadside.
Learn more.

I am desolate in dimension
circling the sky
like a rainy bird,

wet from toe to crown
wet from bill to wing.

I feel like a drowned king
at the pomegranate circus.

I vowed last year
that I wouldn't go again
but here I sit in my usual seat,
dripping and clapping

as the pomegranates go by
in their metallic costumes.

December 25, 1966

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

Aura Literary/Arts Review. Thunder City Press, 1977(?).
11" x 17" broadside.
Learn more.

Yup.
A long lazy September look
in the mirror
says it's true:

I'm 31
and my nose is growing
old.

It starts about
     an inch
below the bridge
and strolls geriatrically
     down
for another inch or so:
     stopping.

Fortunately, the rest
of the nose is comparatively

First Published
O'er, no. 2, Dec. 1966, pp. 107-109.
8.5" x 11" mimeographed sheets of different colored construction paper. 128 pages. Staple binding
Published in San Francisco, California, by Cranium Press.
Edited by David Sandberg.
Learn more

Selected Reprints
Totem, March 1966. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, p. 20.
Learn more.

Hjortsberg, William. Jubiliee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan. Counterpoint, 2012, back jacket flap
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I don't care how God-damn smart
these guys are: I'm bored.

It's been raining like hell all day long
and there's nothing to do.

Written January 24, 1967 while poet-in-residence
at the California Institute of Technology

Background
Written during Brautigan's poet-in-residency at the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, California, 17-26 January 1967. Brautigan and Andrew Hoyem drove from San Francisco to Los Angeles on Sunday, 15 January 1967 in order to spend the following ten days at Cal Tech. Rain fell throughout the day, Tuesday, 24 January, and Brautigan recorded his boredom in this poem. He shared the poem with Cal Tech students during Le Grand Farewell Appearance, the following day, Wednesday, 25 January, 11:00 A.M. in the Winnett Lounge.

First Published
Totem, May 1967. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, p. 21.
LEARN more

Selected Reprints
Four Poems. Synaesthesia Press: Tempe, Arizona, 2000.
Learn more.

San Francisco Express Times, vol. 1, no. 49, December 24, 1968, pp. 8-9.
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If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
     one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
     of my affection
and think, "It's beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
     somebody loved me,"
I'd love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
     at peace,
and ask yourself, "I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them."

Selected Reprints
Man: In the Poetic Mode, Vol. 4. Edited by Joy Zwiegler. McDougal, Littell & Company, 1970, p. 1.
"Learn more."

1. Get enough food to eat,
and eat it.

2. Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,
and sleep there.

3. Reduce intellectual activity and emotional noise
until you arrive at the silence of yourself,
and listen to it.

First Published
The Communication Company, April 1967.
8.5" x 11" mimeographed broadside. Imprint: The Communication Company
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Selected Reprints
"Three Poems." London Magazine, Nov. 1970, p. 65.
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Man: In the Poetic Mode, Vol. 3. Edited by Joy Zwiegler. McDougal, Littell & Company, 1970
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I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

First Published
The Communication Company, 1967.
8.5" x 11" mimeographed broadside with hand-lettered title and imprint (Communication Company). All else type-written.
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Selected Reprints
TriQuarterly no. 11, (Winter) 1968, p. 194.
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The Digger Papers. August 1968, p. 11.
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The Realist, no. 81. August 1968, p. 11.
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Sun, vol. 9, no. 7 August 1968.
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San Francisco Express Times, vol. 1, no. 49, Dec. 24, 1968, pp. 8-9.
Learn more

Man: In the Poetic Mode, Vol. 4. Edited by Joy Zwiegler. McDougal, Littell & Company, 1970, p. 114.
"Learn more."

The Ways of the Poem. Edited by Josephine Miles. Prentice Hall, 1972, pp. 376-377.
LEARN more.

The Exploited Eden: Literature on the American Environment. Edited by Robert Gangewere. New York: Harper and Row, 1972, p. 376.
LEARN more.

The Thunder City Press Broadside Series, No. 5 Richard Brautigan 8 Poems. Thunder City Press, February 1976.
11" x 17" broadside.
Learn more

Cybernetic, Volume 2, Number 1, The American Society for Cybernetics, Fairfax, VA, p. 39, 1986
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Shannon, L. R. "The Promise, the Reality and the Hope." New York Times, 8 December 1987, p. 27.
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New York State Regents Exams Comprehensive English Test
Wednesday, 19 June 2002, 9:15—12:15 AM.
Brautigan's poem, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, was included in this exam.
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California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present. Heyday, 2003
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Connections
Gangeware, Robert J., editor. "All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace." The Exploited Eden: Literature on the American Environment. Harper and Row, 1972, p. 376.
Included the following introduction, "American poets seldom portray the happy marriage of technology and the natural world. Thus the optimism of the following poem is somewhat unique—unless the reader detects irony, in which case the poem joins the mainstream of antitechnological American verse."

Charles Perry, commenting on the debate over technology, says, "The "robots will do all the work" vision of utopia was certainly widesread, the subject for instance of Richard Brautigan's famous poem, 'All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace' and one of the recurring ideas in the Leary-Snyder debate in Oracle No. 7."
— The Haight-Ashbury. A History. Rolling Stone Press, 1984, p. 261.

I had a good-talking candle
last night in my bedroom.

I was very tired but I wanted
somebody to be with me,
so I lit a candle

and listened to its comfortable
voice of light until I was asleep.

Selected Reprints
Man: In the Poetic Mode, Vol. 3. Edited by Joy Zwiegler. McDougal, Littell & Company, 1970
"Learn more."

It's night

and a numbered beauty
lapses at the wind,

chortles with the
branches of a tree,

giggles,

plays shadow dance
with a dead kite,

cajoles affection
from falling leaves,

and knows four
other things.

One is the color
of your hair.

First Published
Hollow Orange, no. 4, 1967, n. pg.
Published at 642 Shrader Street, San Francisco, California, by Cranium Press
Edited by Clifford Burke
String tied wrappers
Learn more

Selected Reprints
The Thunder City Press Broadside Series, No. 5 Richard Brautigan 8 Poems. Thunder City Press, February 1976.
11" x 17" broadside.
Learn more O'er, no. 2, December 1966, pp. 107-109.

Her face grips at her mouth
like a leaf to a tree
or a tire to a highway
or a spoon to a bowl of soup.

She just can't let go
with a smile,
the poor dear.

No matter what happens
her face is always a maple tree
Highway 101
tomato.

Textual References
"Highway 101": Also known as the Pacific Coast Highway, which runs along the coast from Seattle, Washington, to Los Angeles, Californina.

Selected Reprints
Man: In the Poetic Mode, Vol. 4. Edited by Joy Zwiegler. McDougal, Littell & Company, 1970, p. 22.
"Learn more."

There are doors
that want to be free
from their hinges to
fly with perfect clouds.

There are windows
that want to be
released from their
frames to run with
the deer through
back country meadows.

There are walls
that want to prowl
with the mountains
through the early
morning dusk.

There are floors
that want to digest
their furniture into
flowers and trees.

There are roofs
that want to travel
gracefully with
the stars through
circles of darkness.

Selected Reprints
Aura Literary/Arts Review. Thunder City Press, 1977(?).
11" x 17" broadside.
Learn more.

Dugdale, Anthony. "Romantic Renegades." Architectural Design, vol. 48, no. 7, 1978, pp. 444-46.
Learn more.

Bokinsky,1980

"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."

Lock,1999

"All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace"
Beth Lock
MyMac.com, 2 Nov. 1999.
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.

"I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky."

Richard Brautigan, 1935-1984, Beat poet of his generation, wrote this poem in 1967, when I was but a freshman in high school. It would be another seven years before I stumbled upon his works. When I finally did, I was living the life of a loose hippie chick in Sandpoint, Idaho, and enjoying it to the fullest. We would gather in groups and read Brautigan out loud, each taking turns with the slim volumes, sometimes staying up all night analyzing what he meant. Home computers were unheard of in 1974. And yet on fireplace-smoky freezing nights, we would read Brautigan and among other things, we wondered what computers would do for our lives. We knew only of giant mainframe computers, and the ones portrayed in science fiction. It would be another two years before Jobs and Wozniak introduced the Apple II. So where, in 1967, did this vision of Richard Brautigan's come from?

"I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms"

Richard Brautigan, master of words. He was known to walk the streets of Berkeley in the late '60's and early 70's, painting words of people he knew and saw. He would sit in the streetside cafes and watch others as they strolled by. He wrote about love, and life, and heartache, and passion, and... once, about computers. He had a vision of a time when we would live in harmony with our computers. What if we envisioned right now, like Richard Brautigan did in 1967, what computers might be in thirty years? What if we collectively envisioned them as a tool to bring loving grace to our planet? In 1974 it was easy to imagine that computers would change the world for the worse, put us under the control of government, and take away our freedom. It's easy to imagine that now, with such things like loss of privacy through the Internet. But in turning our thought patterns around, it would be just as easy to imagine the opposite.

"I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace."

"... all watched over by machines of loving grace." Not machines which control our lives, or machines that create discord between platforms, but machines of loving grace. Machines which free us of our labors, and join us back to nature, and return us to our mammal brothers and sisters. What a wonderful age we live in. Our machines of loving grace unite us with the planet. How nice it would be if we could recognize the power which our computers actually give us. How nice it would be if we all would just begin, once again, to look upon our computers with fresh eyes and see the power of the Internet, and how it has the potential to unite us all together in peace and harmony. How nice to know that these marvelous machines really do free us from our labors, so we have the time to join our mammal brothers and sisters in nature.

Shortly after I began writing this piece, Microsoft was ruled by a Federal court to be a monopoly. My mailbox filled with joyous gloating from the Macintosh community. Ah ha! We knew it all along! The evil empire will be struck down! At last, we are vindicated! Patting ourselves on the back, we gloat to one another. And I wonder why this becomes such an important issue in our lives. Although we have lobbied for years for comparable software and a presence in the business world, and other issues which we Macintosh fanatics have so strongly evangelized for, in the long run how has it truly affected our lives in a negative way? After all, aren't you sitting in front of your Macintosh reading this, right now?

I still maintain that as long as Apple continues to lead the way in cutting edge technology, I'll not give up my Macintosh until you pry the keyboard from my cold, dead fingers. I also prefer Macintosh because I do not admire Microsoft's business practices. I think their operating system is clumsy. I think the judge ruled fairly. But when I think about computers in general, I think of the machines of loving grace. Do I evangelize the Macintosh? You bet I do, every chance I get, especially for new users and those who are looking for "something better." But when someone who has grown up using PCs and owns practical and useful software for that platform is looking to buy a new computer, I have to say that I support them in their right to choose their preferred "machine of loving grace."

Richard Brautigan is dead, so you can't email him and tell him how you feel about his poem. It is said that he committed suicide in his Montana cabin sometime in 1986. I guess his time was done. Perhaps, if he had had, at that time, a machine of loving grace...

Be well, world. Live with loving grace in your hearts. Microsoft lost. Be gracious about it, and look to the future. It's coming faster than we can imagine.

bherenow?

American Dust

Brautigan > All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

Publication

A6.1: 1st USA Edition, The Communication Company, 1967

Covers

Reported Variants

Copyright Statement

Publication Statement

Background

Printing History

Feedback from Claude Hayward

Contents

Feedback from Susan Morgan

Reviews

Hirschman, Jack. "Five Poets." Poetry, July 1968, pp. 274-275.

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.

Lock, Beth. All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. MyMac.com, 2 Nov. 1999.

Nambisan, Vijay. "Pines and Cybernetics." The Hindu, 4 June 2000, p. 1.

In Translation

Spanish

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