Lay the Marble Tea

by Richard Brautigan

First published in 1959, Lay the Marble Tea, a collection of twenty-four poems, was Brautigan's first published collection of poetry; his third poetry book publication.

Where most of Brautigan's later poetry was written in the first person, this collection offered a variety of historical and literary narrators. These poems, as did most of his subsequent work, blurred the boundaries between poetry and prose.

Genres: Poetry, American, 20th Century

16 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

Richard Brautigan was an American novelist, poet, and short-story writer. Born in Tacoma, Washington, he moved to San Francisco in the 1950s and began publishing poetry in 1957. He started writing novels in 1961 and is probably best known for his early work Trout Fishing in America. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1984.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took probably just half an hour to read the entire collection but I was so charmed that I at once started reading Lay the Marble Tea all over again…
Yes, if you want it there is a Sonnet… But it sounds like no sonnet…

The sea is like an old nature poet who died of a heart attack in a public latrine.
His ghost still haunts the urinals.
At night he can be heard walking around barefooted in the dark.
Somebody stole his shoes.

The microscopic poems are lush… And verses are rich in sweet and sad and poetic absurdity…
Even William Shakespeare wouldn’t be able to create such a dulcet epithalamium for Hamlet as The Castle of the Cormorants…

Hamlet with a cormorant under his arm married Ophelia.
She was still wet from drowning.
She looked like a white flower that had been left in the rain too long.
I love you, said Ophelia, and I love that dark bird you hold in your arms.

Wonders are all around… And one mustn’t be a seafarer to catch Moby Dick as Richard Brautigan easily did in Herman Melville in Dreams, Moby Dick in Reality…

In reality Moby Dick was a Christ-like goldfish that swam through the aquarium saving the souls of snails,
and Captain Ahab was a religious Siamese cat that helped old ladies start their automobiles.

To see all the old things under the sun in the new magic light one must break all clichés in the world.

[Daisy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Crap!
If you are looking for a longer review I will say it’s the poetry of those smug late 50’s San Fran poets who lived under the delusion that any old thought in their head was worthy of writing down and inflicting on the public.

As evidence:
The sea is like
an old nature poet
who died of a
heart attack in a
public latrine.

It is all very childishly out to shock by mentioning pee, pants and toilets a lot. If only someone has told him to grow up and get a proper job, San Francisco might have had a grade A plumber.

[Hákon Gunnarsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short little book, 24 poems in all, was Richard Brautigan’s first published poetry collection. I like it because the Brautiganish weirdness and the humor is there. Some of the poems I like more than others. I think my favorite poem from this book is the one called “Herman Melville in Dreams, Moby Dick in Reality” and goes like this:

In reality Moby Dick
was a Christ-like goldfish
that swam through the aquarium
saving the souls of snails,

and Captain Ahab
was a religious Siamese cat
that helped old ladies
start their automobiles.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brautigan's third book of poetry written in 1959 is his shortest collection clocking in at 24 poems only. Among my favorites is this one:

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.

His poems read like little short story vignettes and he has such an offbeat and surreal way of putting words together to form these stories. All his works put a smile on my face.

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great little poetry collection with a terrible cover... Brautigan's third book of poetry is the one that truly launched his 'voice' into the world.

[Mat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Brautigan's first major collection of poems, following soon after his debut with The Galilee Hitchhiker.

Most of these early Brautigan poems are great - whacky, coming right out of left field, and many of them with a bizarre twist at the end, like a haiku that's just been hit over the head with a mallet, stunned. He does have a few very simplistic and underwhelming poems, which I imagine are the ones that Spicer was not too keen on, even though he strongly believed in Brautigan's talent as a prose writer (and thanks to Spicer's keen eye and thorough editing, we have the classic American Dadaist prose-masterpiece that is Trout Fishing in America!).

Perhaps my favorite poem of this collection was called "A Boat" describing the werewolf who "started crying when he saw the Ferris wheel. Electric green and red tears flowed down his furry cheeks." Even though Brautigan never took LSD (and rarely smoked grass), you can see why the Hippies wanted to claim him as their poet laureate.

This is a great little book of poems - highly recommended, and a quick read but once again the major problem is tracking down a copy. The interesting drawing on the cover by Kenn Davis speaks to Brautigan's unusual 'hobby' of visiting graveyards and studying all the inscriptions (I assume).

[Devin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read someone's review who mentioned that 'Lay the Marble Tea' is when and where Richard Brautigan became Richard Brautigan, and I am inclined to agree. 'The Galilee Hitch Hiker' sees him stepping in that direction, but here he dives right into the style he would become known for. A decent read.

[Arthur Cravan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I liked it a fair bit more than Loading Mercury With a Pitchfork. It felt shorter & more... well, it was obviously before so much of him had been eaten away.

[Kitten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Around the Year in 52 Books 2020: A book from your TBR/wishlist that you don't recognize, recall putting there, or put there on a whim.

[Sameen Shakya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Brautigan is an author that I've heard a lot about, mostly his novels which I haven't had the pleasure of reading yet. When I found out he'd written some poems too and had, in fact, multiple poetry collections to his name, I thought I'd take a plunge.

I started with Lay the Marble Tea in part because it is the shortest, being only 24 poems long, and also because of its intriguing cover. True to the cover's liminal and enamoring atmosphere, the poems deliver by being short, punchy, and whimsical. A great book.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short book of early Brautigan poems. Unlike his other early books of poems, all of which were anthologized in The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, Lay the Marble has 15 poems that did not appear there or anywhere else.

[Christopher Litsinger · Rating 2 out of 5]

For me this did not resonate as much as his earlier two broadsides, nor his later poetry.

[Landon Hale · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not follow this volume very well. It did not make much sense.