Playful Imagination and Twisted Compassion of Richard Brautigan’s poems

Two poems of Richard Brautigan:

Romeo and Juliet

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.

Have You Ever Felt Like a Wounded Cow

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?

Playful Imagination and Twisted Compassion

of Richard Brautigan’s poems

Molly’s response paper II, 4-24-2012

            What kind of person would describe Romeo and Juliet’s graves as two lovers washing clothes together one bringing the soap and the other bringing the bleach? Richard put the classical and over-romanticized love story into a lowly Laundromat, and the grandiose You-die-for-me-and-I-die-for-you scenario became mundane, trivial and funny. Yet, between the lines of soaps and bubbles, a not-often-seen gentle and tender affection leaks out.

The metaphor of soap and bleach reminds me of a Chinese poem: “把一块泥，捻一个你，塑一个我，将咱两个一齐打碎，用水调和；再捻一个你，再塑一个我。我泥中有你，你泥中有我”, translated as “Mold two statues of you and me with mud, break both of them, then mix our mud together, and mold another two statues of you and me, so you have me in you and I have you in me.” Likewise for Richard we can say “let’s mix together as soap and bleach”.

In the “wounded cow” poem I love the “pregnant seventeen-year-old housewife’s two-day-old cookbook” line, simply a one-sentence but life time of information about a girl. As casually as it seems to push all the intense combinations of words (17-year-old house wife, two-day-old cookbook) into one phrase, it also shows the author’s depth of thought and empathy towards the girl and the society (and the cow). 

His imagination and ridiculousness surprise me and make me smile. I don’t know if he was avoiding being overly sentimental by twisting his compassion into dark satire, but I believe his poems playfully poke at the softness of our heart.