Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt by Richard Brautigan (1970)

The eighth book of poetry by the American Sixties counter-culture  writer.

Poetry Review: Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt is an idiosyncratic book of short poems, all written in a gentle, pointed, sarcastic, or wondering tone. Richard Brautigan (1935-1984) is a poet and novelist I've long heard of but never read, and he writes in an astonishing variety of genres. Here there are surreal poems (which reminded me of Sixties poet, Bill Knott): "He's howling in the pines/at the edge of your fingertips." Love poems: "and then to lie silently like deer tracks/in the freshly-fallen snow beside the one/you love. That's all." What would someday come to be known as tumblr poetry: "Do you think of me/as often as I think/of you?" Hippie poems: "There is a motorcycle/in New Mexico." Poems of childhood: "My teachers could easily have ridden with Jesse James for all the time they stole from me." He can venture back to the Eighth Century to echo Chinese poet Li Po: "Drinking wine this afternoon/I realize the days are getting longer." Brautigan's flaws include a Sixties love of sometimes using word choice simply to shock, and occasionally violating Lawrence Ferlinghetti's dictum (as do virtually all tumblr poets): "don't think quirks of thought are poetry." Although not all these poems are gems, there are still so many successes so quickly read that the joy rarely wavers. Personally, I love short poems -- for me a long poem might as well be prose. The point of a poem is to be brief, targeted, rapier. An epiphany, a revelation, a crystalline moment imprismed. And Brautigan delivers. Although I think he's lost much of his fame since the Sixties, the poems in Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt are more than just a time capsule. Some of them are quite daring, breaking with what would've been acceptable in those days, as did beat poets such as Gregory Corso or Peter Orlovsky: "I feel so bad today/that I want to write a poem./I don't care: any poem, this/poem." Brautigan also embodies that all too rarely found role of the poet as mystic, seer, prophet, channeler of the zeitgeist. But don't let that discourage the reader: he can be plain spoken as a shovel. For those intimidated by poetry, who feel it may be too deep, difficult, or daunting, Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt is the book to change your mind.  [4★]