The Purpose of Poetry

Remember Richard Brautigan? I didn’t think you would For this of us coming of age in the late 60’s and early 70’s, he was quite big amongst my hippy friends— along with Herman Hesse, Alan Watts and such. He was a poet/novelist who worked out of San Francisco. Indeed, one of his book covers is a photo of the Presidio Library on Sacramento. 

 

I didn’t know much about his life, but of course, there’s no excuse now to be ignorant with Wikipedia at your fingertips. He seems to have fulfilled the portait of the eccentric, tormented artist, with a childhood steeped in trauma, a meteoric coming of age ascent that included publishing his novel Trout Fishing in America that went on to sell 4 million copies worldwide, and then a decline into alcoholism, depression and ultimately suicide at the age of 49 while living in a cabin in Bolinas, California. 

 

Since the 1980’s, I’ve thought about him exactly once, in an intriguing conversation with an Iranian music teacher who said he influenced her deeply. Once, that is, until today. 

 

I don’t remember any of his poem or plots of his novels, but there was a phrase in one of his poems that speaks eloquently to the way I feel today. And that, after all, is the purpose of poetry. To find an image much more articulate than “I feel good” or “I feel bad.” And this one fits the bill.

 

In his words, in my fourth day of Covid, “I feel like a turd sewed to a garbage can lid.”

 

Thank you, Richard Brautigan. That about covers it.