Loading Mercury With a Pitchfork

by Richard Brautigan

Mostly brief, frequently enigmatic verses point to the possibilities, complications, and plausible improbabilities of a world viewed from an original perspective

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, American, 20th Century, Ebooks, Humor, Art

127 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

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

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

A cross between George Carlin and Pablo Neruda - you start to laugh and then POW! - Richard Brautigan sucker punches you in the gut with an existential blow. A true zeitgeist poet who deserves a much wider readership; his books are so hard to find - but I am always looking for more of his works when I go to used bookstores.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Punitive ghosts like steam-driven tennis courts
haunt the apples in my nonexistent orchard.
I remember when there were just worms out there
and they danced in moonlit cores on warm September
nights.

---

We were the eleven o'clock news
because while the rest of the world
was going to hell we made love.

---

Toward the pleasures of a reconstituted crow
I collect darkness within myself like the shadow
of a blind lighthouse.

[Alan]

Wait this book actually landed so hard. Why such raw impact?

Unbelievable poems in there. I loved these:

- It’s Time To Train Yourself
- The Act Of: Death-Defying Affection
- Two Guys Get Out Of A Car
- Information
- We Meet. We Try. Nothing Happens, But
- Right Beside The Morning Coffee
- The Necessity of Appearing In Your Own Face
- For Fear You Will Be Alone
- Everything Includes Us

Here is For Fear You Will Be Alone:

For fear you will be alone
you do so many things
that aren’t you at all.

Thank you for joining me on this brief Brautigan intermission. I hope you have a pleasant night.

[Theo Logos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Have you ever said, or heard someone say something pithy and semi profound, a little bon mot, or a throw away line, and then someone says,
“Oh, that could be a poem!”?
Well, that’s this book in a nutshell.

In the sixties, before his novels were published, Brautigan identified almost exclusively as a poet, and it appears to me that he took his poetry more seriously then. It was still often playful and irreverent, his poems short more often than not, but they had a quality that invoked potential greatness.

The poems in this volume have an echo of that earlier work, but seem more off the cuff, often little more than notes to himself. Nothing here invokes the artistry found in his Galilee Hitch-Hiker series of poems, or All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. None is more than a few lines, several are just a single sentence. It’s as if his success as a novelist made him ignore the craft that he had honed as a poet.

There are good poems here. Brautigan was at his poetic best when he was being bawdy, as in:


Fuck me like fried potatoes
on the most beautifully hungry
morning of my God-damn life.


And he remained a master of pensive whimsy as displayed in Seconds:


With so short a time to live and think
about stuff, I’ve spent just about
the right amount of time on this
butterfly.


These poems and others like them make Loading Mercury With A Pitchfork worth you while. My problem with it isn’t that it’s not good, just disappointment that it failed to be great. Four stars for Brautigan enthusiasts, three stars for most everyone else (two stars for poetry snobs)

[L.S. Popovich · Rating 4 out of 5]

"As mechanical as a flight of stairs, as solemn as a flight of stairs, they have found each other after years of looking."

[Peycho Kanev · Rating 4 out of 5]

WE WERE THE ELEVEN O’CLOCK NEWS

We were the eleven o’clock news
because while the rest of the world
was going to hell we made love.

THE AMELIA EARHART PANCAKE

I have been unable to find a poem
for this title. I’ve spent years
looking for one and now I’m giving
up.

November 3, 1970

THE LAST SURPRISE

The last surprise is when you come
gradually to realize that nothing
surprises you any more.

[Cassie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Fuck Me Like Fried Potatoes"

Fuck me like fried potatoes
on the most beautifully hungry
morning of my God-damn life.

[Sabra Embury · Rating 4 out of 5]

I swear you could read this entire collection in fifteen minutes doing some sort of standing exercise by a lamp in a dark room past midnight, say meh to the majority of it and love the hell out of at least five of the bite-size poems inside. Here are a few of my favorites:

MONTANA INVENTORY

At 85 miles per hour an insect splattered
like saffron on the windshield
and a white cloud in a blue sky above the
-----speed-curried bug

THE NECESSITY OF APPEARING IN YOUR OWN FACE

There are days when that is the last place
in the world that you want to be but you
have to be there, like a movie, because it
-----features you.

WHAT HAPPENED?

You were the prettiest girl
in your high school graduating class
----- in 1927.

Now you have short blue hair
and nobody loves you,
not even your own children.

They don't like to have you around
because you make them nervous.

HEROINE OF THE TIME MACHINE

When she was fifteen if you'd told her
that when she was twenty she'd be going
to bed with bald-headed men and liking it,
she would have thought you very abstract.

[Hákon Gunnarsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always get something from Richard Brautigan’s poetry, and this book is no different. It’s always at least interesting. Some of it is so obvious that it seems simple, like this one for example:

It's Time To Train Yourself

It's time to train yourself
to sleep alone again
and it's so fucking hard.

This is just a simple observation of life that works because it is spot on. At other times he is just funny, like in this one:

Nine Crows: Two Out of Sequence

1,2,3,4,5,7,6,8,9

Maybe I’m easily amused, but I did actually laugh out loud at this one. I think this poem:

The Last Surprise

The last surprise is when you come
gradually to realize that nothing
surprises you any more.

May be closer than most to the way I feel right now. After these last few years I think I’m getting close to my last surprise, and I don’t know if that is good or not. But on the other hand:

Nobody Knows What the Experience Is Worth

Nobody knows what the experience is worth
but it's better than sitting on your hands,
I keep telling myself.

Which I think is another one that is spot on, even though I’m probably not good at taking this advice. I’ll end this review with another poem where Brautigan’s humor shines through:

The Amelia Earhart Pancake

I have been unable to find a poem
for this title. I've spent years
looking for one and now I'm giving
up.

He never fails to find an unusual angle on things.

[Corey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not one of his best. Some of these are so slight they are not really poems, of any kind. However, he still could pull off a form of whimsy that is all his.

It Takes a Secret to Know a “Secret”

It takes a secret to know a “secret.”
Then you have two secrets that know
each other. Just
what you always wanted, they stand
there looking at each other with their
pajamas on.

[Laurie Neuwirth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought Brautigan was original and funny with strokes of genius - I had a professor who thought Brautigan's stuff was junk. Was sad that he ended up in a bad way - alcohol and suicide but his poems reflect a love for love and search for meaning and a good breakfast (fried potatos on the most beautifully hungry morning of my....)

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

What can I say? One of my favourite poets.
Offbeat, perhaps impossible to categorise, poems about all sorts of things....

[None Ofyourbusiness Loves Israel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This tiny tome is a brisk, icy dip into the poetry pool. A stripped-down Shel Silverstein, it offers snapshots of the world, stark and surprising. Ordinary things shimmer with unexpected strangeness, forcing a double take.

Brautigan’s rebellion against poetic pomp paved the way for a new breed of verse. This 1976 collection, a centum of poems strong, is a testament to his defiance. Its opening salvo, a four-line dare to the impossible—pitchforking liquid mercury—sets the tone for what follows.

These poems are pocket-sized provocations, demanding close attention. They are not puzzles to solve, but rather invitations to see the familiar anew.

THE NECESSITY OF APPEARING IN YOUR OWN FACE There are days when that is the last place in the world where you want to be but you have to be there, like a movie, because it features you.

THE LAST SURPRISE The last surprise is when you come gradually to realize that nothing surprises you any more.

[A.M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me start by saying that I am on a Richard Brautigan "kick" and intend to read everything that he wrote that I actually own and/or can find at a library by the end of the year. I love Brautigan, though I am not sure I can explain why, exactly. His poetry and prose are simple, humble and humorous with underlying hints of deep wisdom.

I must admit that my first read of Loading Mercury With A Pitchfork was ambivalent. Having received insightful comments from the Poetry Book Club on his work, Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt that questioned Brautigan's merit as a great poet, I read this collection with more wariness - and my initial thought upon finishing it was "What the ___?"

But on a second read, I found the book brilliant. He organizes the collection into chapters with headings, and this provides a unifying theme for the individual poems. My favorite sections were "Crows and Mercury," "Love," "Group Portrait Without the Lions" and "Good Luck, Captain Martin."

"Crows and Mercury" is just quirky, but I enjoyed "Crow Maiden," the longest poem in the entire book, and the following (among others):

Punitive ghosts like steam-driven tennis courts
haunt the apples in my nonexistent orchard.
I remember when there were just worms out there
and they danced in moonlit cores on warm September
nights.

"Love" is a study of the many facets of the emotion - from sex to desire to jealousy - from the mundane to the sublime. I enjoyed the dark humor in this one, entitled WHAT HAPPENED?:

You were the prettiest girl
in your high school graduating class
in 1927.

Now you have short blue hair
and nobody loves you,
not even your children.

They don't like to have you around
because you make them nervous.

The chapter "Group Portrait Without the Lions" is an interesting collection of 14 short poetic snapshots of various characters. I love AH, GREAT EXPECTATIONS (among others - alas, I cannot list them all):

Sam likes to say, "Ah, great expectations!"
at least three or four times in every
conversation. He is twelve years old.
Nobody knows what he is talking about when
he says it. Sometimes it makes people
feel uncomfortable.

Finally, "Good Luck, Captain Martin" is a poetic story in six parts. All six poems are profound, but I will end this review with Part 2:

People are constantly making entrances
into entrances by entering themselves
through houses, bowling alleys and planetariums,
restaurants, movie theaters, offices, factories,
mountains and Laundromats, etc., entrances
into entrances, etc., accompanied by themselves.

Captain Martin watches
the waves go by.

That's his entrance
into himself.

[Sheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am giving this book 5 stars, not just the poetry inside but this particular copy of this book.
I ordered it from a used book warehouse, knowing it would be hardback but nothing else.
I received it yesterday in the middle of a real weird day, and the object itself delighted me even before I read any of the poems inside.
It's an original, hardback edition published in 1976, with the original silver jacket with a photo of a crouching Brautigan on the front. It was accessioned into the Las Vegas Public Library in Sept 1977, and then marked for DISCARD at some point after that. What kind of person checked out this freaky hippie looking poetry book from the Las Vegas Public Library? Did anybody? Would I have checked it out as a precocious 10 year old? Probably not, I don't think I was that precocious until I was 12.
Anyway, inside are mostly typical 2-5 line Brautigan poems that are alternately funny, tragic, forgettable, crushingly gorgeous, and maddeningly insightful. This book contains my two very favorite Brautigan poems:
Crow Maiden, which might have been more at home in a short story collection, but has a poetic refrain; and Fuck Me Like Fried Potatoes, which is the most perfect 16 word distillation of desire.
There is a whole lot more wonder in here, maybe you can get your hands on a used copy and write some poems about the people who held it before you.

[Mat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wish we could give 1/2 stars. This one is definitely not 5 stars in my opinion, it is almost a 4-star collection, but 3 stars seems a little bit harsh. Therefore I'll give it 3.5 stars.

Of the 95 poems featured in this collection, I really liked about 41 of them. Not a bad poetry batting average at all.

If you are familiar with Brautigan's writing, you'll already know that he can be very surreal, hilariously funny (in a ridiculous way) and also very macabre. Although their styles are VERY different, in some sense he reminds of Samuel Beckett - very, very dark, but the dark humour saves it from being depressively dark.

At the same time, there are great moments of levity and whimsy here. Brautigan always takes you by surprise and that's why I always return to his work, again and again.

This collection contains some absolutely outstanding poems but unfortunately plenty of 'filler' or instantly forgettable poems. If Brautigan had whittled down this collection to only the very best (let's say about half its actual size), and jettisoned the rest, then this book would have been a real corker!

Poems like "Punitive Ghosts like Steam-driven Tennis Courts" and "Towards the Pleasures of a Reconstituted Crow" and "It Takes a Secret to Know a 'Secret'" are not only brilliant short pieces, where the title itself is brilliant enough, but also I cannot imagine them being written by anyone other than Richard Brautigan. He has such a distinctive sound and style.

He is very versatile as well. While some of his very 'meta' poems are cute (but instantly forgettable), he is capable of writing great poignant lyrical poems like "You Will Have Unreal Recollections of Me" which are very deep and meaningful.

The sheer range of poetic styles points to an erratic but possibly troubled, but at the same time, very fecund mind, from which all sorts of creative wonders can spring and grow.

A must-read for all Brautigan fans and recommended for all poetry lovers looking for something a little different. Brautigan does not write like the heavy 'cerebral' poets, and that is part of the joy of reading him. Go get it. My 3.5 star rating is an indication of the large amount of 'sand' in the pan, but if you sift through it, there are some absolute gems here, waiting, waiting, to be found.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve been a fan of Richard Brautigan for a long time. I’ve read all his novels and as many of his short stories and poems that I can lay my hands on. He never disappoints. Some works are better than others but when you’re caught up reading him you’re too busy enjoying the moment to think about how many stars you’re going to give the book. This rule holds true for all his novels and stories but especially his poems because all the ‘story’ has been removed and all you’re left with are moments of pure joy. I’m talking ‘joy’ in the broadest sense because not all the poems in this wee collection are joyful; many, if not most, are on the sad side actually or perhaps that’s just me.

Most of these poems are tiny affairs and don’t always amount to much on their own but en masse something happens, a blurring. There are some standout pieces, like ‘THE CURVE OF FORGOTTEN THINGS’:

        Things slowly curve out of sight
        until they are gone. Afterwards
                          only the curve
                          remains.

but most are not memorable in that way although many have an aphoristic flavour to them. It’s hard not to read this collection too quickly, to flit from one piece to the next without thinking about them. That’s a mistake but a mistake people make with most poetry. Not all of these pieces are nearly as obvious as they might seem on first reading. Some even veer towards the profound:

        Finding is losing something else.
        I think about, perhaps even mourn,
                          what I lost to find this.

This book is a wee treasure.

[Ave · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't say Im generally a particular fan of poetry. Mostly when it comes to nowadays modern poets i quiet often just don't get the point.
However stumbling over the collection of Richard Brautigan poems was a rather joyful thing. I sort of would describe my relationship with the author as a love hate thing. Loved Watermelon sugar, quite hated Trout fishing in America.
However I haven't smiled quite this much in a while. Just very nice simple life poems. That often have a interesting point to them.
The collection would be to someone who has a sense of humor and doesn't mind occasional foul language.

My particular favorites would be KARMA REPAIR KIT: ITEMS 1-4 and NINE CROWS: TWO OUT OF SEQUENCE

Also the collection i read was a translated version and also there were more different poems in there than in this english version seems to have.
So maybe also check out...

June 30th, June 30th
The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster
Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt
Revenge of the Lawn

read: estonian

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gave me an idea for a zine. Stay tuned.

[Nancy Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

SECONDS

With so short a time to live and think
about stuff, I've spent just about
the right amount of time on this
butterfly.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nobody knows what the experience is worth but it's better than sitting on your hands, I keep telling myself.

[Lenny DellaRocca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm rating this based on hardly no memory of it. I read it in the 70s? 80s? I remember liking it. I think I liked it a lot. I remember loving Braughtigan.

[Bre LoPresti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Night again
again night

Read at the Chicago Poetry Foundation

[Nathan Gewant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to Jack for lending me his copy

[Redfeather · Rating 4 out of 5]

I talked a good hello
but she talked an even
better good-bye.

[L · Rating 4 out of 5]

"There are days when that is the last place
in the world where you want to be but you
have to be there, like a movie, because it
features you.

(The necessity of appearing in your own face)

[Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was working in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1986 when I noticed my co-worker had a copy of this book. The title intrigued me. Since he only read it at work, I asked him if I could borrow it each evening and return it each morning. He said yes. I read it and loved it so much that I tried to buy a copy, only to find it was out of print. This is how much I loved this book: Since the book only had a few sentences per page, I wrote the whole book out, page-for-page, and later, (this is pre-computer era) I got some typing paper and two carbon papers and typed it out, giving me three copies of the book -- one for me and two for friends of mine. I must have re-read it at least 10 times, if not more. Each page is a thought unto itself and makes one pause to either conjure up memories, or make one laugh, or wonder if the author was barking mad... among a myriad of other emotions brought to boil in this soup of life's vignette's. It is a good read. A very good read.

[T. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, it's short; we can all agree on this. Despairing thoughts of the everyday life, his life �� but our life, my life, too.

The image of the crow appears every now and then — does it mean death, or the supreme being? Grief versus the sacred. Probably both. Brautigan says, "I mean: Can you forgive yourself / all those crimes without victims?" but he also says, "God-forsaken is beautiful, too."

My favourite, and perhaps the one I will take and think about for days and days:

Finding is Losing Something Else
Richard Brautigan

Finding is losing something else.
I think about, perhaps even mourn,
       what I lost to find this.

[Quentin Ferrari · Rating 5 out of 5]

On second read, this grew on me. These are primarily epigram-type poems that almost dare you to call them bullshit. They don't reveal much out of sequence, but the sequence is the point. The sequence is something about a tired artist trying (and failing) to make connections yet finding small, important successes in the failure. It's lots of fun, especially when Brautigan mixes his metaphors. Sometimes I wonder if the mixed metaphor is the mark of a true poet: "...and your love caresses their feathers like the walls of a midnight clock." But it seems that to live poetry is the mark of a true poet as wel. You won't get it out of sequence, but a moving example to me is "Comet Telegram":

Two words:

Camelot
gone

[Meredith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty quotable. I haven't been that interested in poetry. I really enjoyed this. I plan on tracking down more of his work. He's funny, wise and naughty.

PROCLAMATION

Any thought I have right now
isn't worth a shit because I'm totally
fucked up.

FOR FEAR YOU WILL BE ALONE

For fear you will be alone
you do so many things
that aren't you at all.

FUCK ME LIKE FRIED POTATOES

Fuck me like fried potatoes
on the most beautifully hungry
morning of my God-damned life.