Brautigan, Richard
▶ Watch on YouTubeCoverage note: full (a very short clean auto-generated English transcript of about 450 words)
Core ideas
The excerpt alternates between Brautigan reading brief poems from his 1976 stays in Tokyo and answers to questions asked in 1983. In the first poem, "A Small Boat on the Voyage of Archaeology," he notes a warm thunder-and-lightning storm in Tokyo with lots of rain and umbrellas, a "small detail right now" that "could be very important a million years from now when archaeologists sift through our ruins trying to figure us out." Asked what poetry is good for, he calls it "telegrams of the human soul," meant to illuminate, to make us more compassionate and to help us understand more of the human condition. Asked about the two poles in his books, reality and a fantastic counter-world, he says they alternate: one is the mirror and the other the reflection, and either can play either role; he values perception as one of the "incredible qualities" of humans and says we should use whatever means we can to expand or redefine it. Asked about tenderness and cruelty in his work, he answers only that he is "a product of the twentieth century," that his work "reflects and responds" to it and that the century is drawing to a close.
On Japan, he says he has been "massively influenced" for 31 years by its culture, loves the energy and imagination of its people, finds it stimulating every time and considers it "one of my teachers"; a short poem about leaving his Tokyo hotel room each day with four things (passport, notebook, pen, English-Japanese dictionary) concludes that "the rest of life is a total mystery." Asked how he copes with the 1980s, compared with the 1930s or 1960s, he says he feels "particularly blessed" to live in an exciting time that is already "the future arrived to some extent," with an incredible flow of information, and that "we are just at the dawn of gathering information," like children who will "grow up in information," which will give us perception, understanding and knowledge. His poetry, he says, is simply "part of the information." The extract closes with a poem addressed to those who "live after we are dead": "we knew this moment, we were here."
Excerpts
“Poetry is telegrams of the human soul to illuminate, to make us more compassionate, to understand more of our condition, the human condition.”
“I think perception is one of the incredible qualities of human beings, and any way that we can expand or define, redefine or adventure into the future of perception, we should use whatever means to do so.”
“I think we are just at the dawn of gathering information. I love the future because we are going to expand information to such [a degree]. We are just now like little children walking about in information. What we have in front of us is more information. We will grow up in information, which will help us, will give us perception and understanding and knowledge in how to exist.”