C'est tout ce que j'ai à déclarer - Œuvres poétiques complètes édition bilingue

by Richard Brautigan

ŒUVRE POETIQUE COMPLETE DU « DERNIER DES BEATS »

« Mes deux meilleurs amis ont toujours été Richard Brautigan et Tom Mc Guane. » Jim Harrison

« Ce n’est pas tous les jours qu’on dégote un trésor pareil. Sometimes, I love America, et voilà. » Frédéric Beigbeder

« Découvrir sur une table de librairie un livre de Brautigan qu’on n’a pas lu, quand on aime Brautigan, c’est toujours du grand amour. » Philippe Jaenada, ELLE

« Richard Brautigan a traversé la littérature américaine comme un météore. » Martine Laval, Télérama

L’édition bilingue tant attendue des œuvres poétiques complètes de Richard Brautigan, avec de nombreux inédits.

Richard Brautigan est l’un des plus grands auteurs américains du XXe siècle. Membre de la Beat Generation et des mouvements de la contre-culture, il est l’auteur du roman culte La Pêche à la truite en Amérique, (Christian Bourgois et 10/18) mais également du Général su- diste de Big Sur, Retombées de sombrero, Un privé à Babylone (Christian Bourgois et 10/18) et d’un grand nombre de poèmes dont trois recueils furent édités au Castor Astral : Il pleut en amour, Journal japonais et Pourquoi les poètes inconnus restent inconnus.

Genres: Poetry

800 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 16, 2016

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

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

God, all the shit
that is going to be written
about me
after I am dead

There are two authors (who, apart from a fondness for the absurd, could be less alike) whose complete oeuvre I’ve read (discounting those authors who’ve only written one or two books): Samuel Beckett and Richard Brautigan and in the both cases I read their poetry last. They are also the two authors at the top of a short list whose works, albeit not all of them, I’ve read more than once. So I’m a bit of a fan.

I’ve waited a long time to get my hands on The Complete Poems of Richard Brautigan and can’t understand why it’s taken so long. Back in 2002, a proposed edition of Brautigan's collected poems was rejected by his estate for some reason. Why this bilingual edition got the go-ahead God alone knows but I was glad to discover it.

I’d already read two collections of Brautigan’s poetry, The Pill Versus the Springhill in Disaster and Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork, so I knew what to expect and he did not disappoint apart from the fact collections of his poetry are nowhere near as satisfying as his prose. His work is often slight, self-aware and heavily reliant on similes. The best set of poems are those that make up his final collection June 30th, June 30th and cover his seven week stay in Japan in 1976. They don’t tell a story but the body is greater than the parts. That said his use of similes is second to none:

performs faithfully an act of reality
like a knight in search of the holy grail
or a postman on a rural route looking
for a farm that isn’t there

(from ‘The Postman’)

I feel horrible. She doesn’t
love me and I wander around
the house like a sewing machine
that’s just finished sewing
a turd to a garbage can lid

(from ‘I Feel Horrible She Doesn’t’)

My Schoolboy French didn’t help with the translations with there were a few interesting choices: A+ was rendered 21/20; “swandragon”, “dragons-cygnes”; and, well, I’ll leave you to make what you will of the poem ‘A Correction’:

Cats walk on little cat feet
and frogs walk on little fog feet,
Carl.

Les chats marchent sur des petites pattes de chat
et les grenouilles sur des petites pattes de grenouilles,
Carl.

Brautigan is referencing Carl Sandberg’s poem ‘Fog’ and the translation misses the joke completely.

Many of the poems are forgettable and although they probably worked well enough in the moment don’t have enough weight on their own but they do serve to paint a portrait of the man; many are clearly heavily autobiographical poems. This is not a bad poetry collection by any means and it’s certainly accessible but a little goes a long way. I read the collection one book at a time and that was more than enough. Of course when Brautigan hits the nail on the head he does it like no other:

Geometry

A circle
comes complete
with its
own grave

Raymond Carver wrote in the Chicago Tribune Book World that some of the poems in Brautigan’s The Tokyo-Montana Express resemble “little astonishments going off in your hands,” while others are “so-so.” I think that’s a fair comment. The same goes for this volume.

[Quentin Ferrari · Rating 5 out of 5]

No collection here is perfect for me, but all together they build a nice picture of the way Brautigan's verse shifts over time. I really appreciated this. Bilingual editions can be weird though, and occasionally the translation choices seem..... strange. For example, French title for June 30th, June 30th (which has a lot of thematic significance, however oblique it may be) is changed to "Journal Japonais." I don't understand French that well, though, so my stars reflect only the quality of the poems and the thought their arrangement prompts.

[Faustine Jacquier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Premier recueil bilingue réunissant tous les poèmes de Brautigan, extrêmement difficiles à trouver dans le passé.
2017 fût une belle année pour la poésie de Brautigan, laissée de côté pendant trop longtemps.
À voir aussi les deux recueils publiés par Points avec une préface de Keith Abbott.

[Peter Landau · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster

When you take your pill
it’s like a mine disaster.
I think of all the people
lost inside of you.