Several of Richard Brautigan’s stories have themes of coping with lost love and loneliness. “The Chinese Checker Players” tells the story of an old woman who mourns the death of her husband seventy years after his demise. The poem relates the simple pleasures in life that distract the bereft woman (or anyone in her position), and the comfort that an innocent boy can give. Since the reader does not discover the woman’s grievance until the last lines, the poem ends on a more depressing note. On the other hand, in “Star Hole,” Brautigan speaks hopefully of finding light at the end of the tunnel. Set outside of the earth, Brautigan uses surreal imagery to illustrate how darkness can be illuminated by peering into the distance.
Yet despite the faith and optimism written in the closing lines of “Star Hole,” Brautigan’s life ended in a tragic suicide. Concluding The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster with the poem “Boo, Forever,” he writes to a lost love:
“Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
top,
I’m haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you” (108).
Brautigan’s ending to this book could be seen as an apt end of his life/start of his afterlife as well. As Brautigan himself once said, "all of us have a place in history. Mine is clouds" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Brautigan). Though these three poems all exemplify different reactions to his feelings of distance and isolation, Brautigan’s heart bears a heavy burden that gives his reader a glimpse of how he feels trapped in that faraway hole within his mind.
2 comments:
Your writing in this post is really lovely. You can still be more specific about some of the big statements that you are making. Here, the you manage to tie things together through the associations that you bring together, but in some other posts you don't. So err on the side of specificity please.
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