richard brautigan

Suggested Pairings: Guinness and WCWPCCS

Three disc golf discs, a fillet knife, a bill for salt, and an eggshell book arrived at my door. On the cover a blue goat. I was skeptical/green-eyed, but also glimmed a glow—the book obviously cared for/handmade and who here doesn’t respect a literary artifact? The book is titled The Feeling is Mutual. Written by The Washtenaw County Women’s Poetry Collective & Casserole Society (Amy Berkowitz, Beth Divis, Emma Gorenberg, Elisa McCool & Jessica Young).  What in the blar is the WCWPCCS? And where is my casserole?

A true sense of collaboration. A gathering and letting go. None of the poems or recipes has bylines. Possibly penned by any of the WCWPCCS or by all or by their mysterious “appearances by” friends or by the goat tied to the persimmon tree down by the bass pond. (The authors say themselves: “We no longer recognize our own words.”)

The ingredients of this poetic porringer?

(ALMOST) SONNETS, SPOOKLES, QUESTIONS & ANSWERS, RETELLINGS, CASSEROLES

There is a patented capsule of nitrogen inside my bottle of Guinness. It looks like a toy submarine (the type you could once find in cereal boxes and fill with baking soda). The capsule clatters around inside the bottle, but also releases nitrogen that agitates the previously dissolved CO2 and this makes for a clean, creamy, immortal pour and a head like the caps of waves washing upon the shore of Innisfree. That’s a lot of wonk-science (like $13 million worth) for a fucking beer, but then again this is Guinness.

This is a fine book. I mean the real deal. Let’s begin with the (almost) sonnets.

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July 9th, 2010 / 10:44 am

Richard Brautigan Day at Coop’s Place!

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. 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. . . . I tried to write poetry that would get at some of the hard things in my life that needed talking about but those things you can only tell your old lady.

Utter delight. Thanks, Dennis! & kudos to his guest-poster, Winter Rates.

PS- if WR’s rad day isn’t quite enough Brautigan for you, you wish to check out this essay I wrote on In Watermelon Sugar for LOST Magazine a while back.

Author Spotlight / 36 Comments
December 24th, 2009 / 10:26 am

Torpedo #4: Richard Brautigan tribute issue, now available!

My contributor copy of Torpedo #4 showed up the other day, and it’s such a wild, exciting jam-packed ball of awesome that I can barely even tell you. I’ve been a fan of Torpedo–the quarterly published by Australian indy press Falcon vs. Monkey, Falcon Wins ever since they solicited some of my work for issue two, but totally irrespective (or anyway, independent) of how generous they’ve been to me, they’ve so thoroughly outdone themselves with #4, the BRAUTIGAN issue, that I’d be writing this same blog post even if I’d never met them and couldn’t testify personally to their friendliness and general stellar-osity. Here’s the little blurb about #4 from their site (click thru to go to their store) and after the jump there’s a short Q&A with editor Chris Flynn, some excerpts from the issue, scans of some of the art, and a full T.O.C.

Commemorating the 25th anniversary of his untimely death, Volume 4 is a tribute issue to Richard Brautigan. Fiction from 40 writers including Brian Evenson, Ryan Boudinot, Dan Pope & Caren Beilin. Comes free with a nifty envelope containing 8 full colour double-sided pieces of art based on Brautigan’s novels and stories by Dylan Martorell, Mehgan Trice & Eirian Chapman. An intro by Brautigan’s daughter Ianthe, an outro by Radiohead illustrator Stanley Donwood and a cover by L.A.’s Kristian Olson. Get one before they sell out and fall in love with one of the greatest unsung writers of the 20th Century.

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February 19th, 2009 / 12:37 pm