📓 all watched over by machines of loving grace.md by @flancian ☆

all watched over by machines of loving grace

a [[poem]]
- by [[richard brautigan]]
- part of the [[poetry collection]] of the same title
- see subnode by [[neil]] for the full text
a [[poetry collection]]
- a [[subset]] of [[The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster]]
- [[list]]
- [[wp]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_(poetry_collection)
- [[go]] http://www.brautigan.net/machines.html
  - with the titular [[poem]] in it and 31 others
  - might 32 (2^5) have significance?
- [[meta]] the following section assumes [[auto push]], which I haven’t implemented yet :)
  - once it’s implemented, each node in the following list should get the children blocks automatically transcluded
- [[the beautiful poem]]
  - [[phallocentric]]
  - didn’t find it beautiful, but hey, at least it’s honest
  - sexual in nature
- [[december 24]]
  - didn’t get it, but I like how these are short
- [[milk for the duck]]
  - sexual in nature
  - seems to be about lack of self confidence after not having sex for 20 days
- [[november 3]]
  - echoes of [[frank o’hara]]?
  - "there’s a pretty girl I want to look at" — [[richard brautigan]] was all about the ladies
- [[flowers for those you love]]
  - about [[venereal diseases]]
  - a bit like a [[psa]]
- [[san francisco]]
  - [[found object]]
- [[star hole]]
  - I like this one
  - "I sit here / on the perfect end / of a star / watching light / pour itself toward me"
- [[love poem]]
  - seems there’s an ironic vein, as this poem is about not-loving
- [[I lie here in a strange girl’s apartment]]
  - [[ladies man]] strikes again
  - dedicated to [[marcia pacaud]]
- [[it’s raining in love]]
  - I like this one
  - "or perhaps i start to examine, evaluate, compute what I am saying"
  - "in other words / I get a little creepy"
  - "it’s raining somwhere, programming flowers / and keeping snails happy"
- [[hey! this is what it’s all about]]
  - "it makes me want to write poetry"
- [[our beautiflu west coast thing]]
  - [[the mamas and the papas]]
    - [[california dreamin’]]
    - [[i saw her again]]
- [[widow’s lament]]
  - short
- [[december 30]]
  - about a [[fart]]
- [[lovers]]
  - "put her in a low brass bed"
  - women aren’t very active in many of these, perhaps I’m biased by the phallocentric opener but Brautigan feels a bit objectifying?
- [[a mid-february sky dance]]
  - I liked this one, this feels more participative (a proper dance)
  - "dance toward me, please, as if you were a star / with light-years piled on top of your hair, smiling"
- [[hey, bacon!]]
  - [[desire]]
- [[after halloween slump]]
  - [[magic]]
- [[hollywood]]
  - [[jefferson airplane]]
- [[it’s going down]]
  - "magic is the color of the thing you wear"
- [[albion breakfast]]
  - written to go with a [[found object]]
  - [[susan morgan]]
    - http://www.brautigan.net/nonfiction.html#morgan
  - [[ladies man]]
    - lived without a refrigerator
    - "physically he was none too attractive, but he was [[charming]]"
- [[comets]]
  - "there are comets / connected to chemicals / that telescope / down out tongues / to burn out against / the air"
- [[the pomegranate circus]]
  - "I feel like a drowned king / at the pomegranate circus"
- [[my nose is growing old]]
  - "I’m 31 / and my nose is growing old"
- [[at the california institute of technology]]
  - [[bored]] on a rainy day while poet-in-residence
  - clearly pre internet
- [[your catfish friend]]
  - pre [[catfishing]]
  - "I’d love you and be your catfish friend"
- [[karma repair kit: items 1-4]]
  - liked it
  - 1. "get enough food to eat, and eat it"
  - 1. "find a place to sleep where it is quiet, and sleep there"
  - 1. "reduce intellectual activity and emotional noise until you arrive at the silence of yourself, and listen to it"
- [[all watched over by machines of loving grace]]
  - a [[banger]]
    - taken straight (without irony), it embodies technological optimism and makes me think of the [[agora]]
  - [[cybernetic meadow]]
    - [[programming harmony]]
  - [[cybernetic forest]]
    - "where deer stroll peacefully / past computers / as if they were flowers / with spinning blossoms"
  - [[cybernetic ecology]]
    - [[free of our labors]]
  - [[robert gangeware]] "American poets seldom portray the happy marriage of technology and the natural world. Thus the optimism of the following poem is somewhat unique—unless the reader detects [[irony]], in which case the poem joins [[the mainstream of antitechnological American verse]]."
  - [[charles perry]] "The [[robots will do all the work]] vision of [[utopia]] was certainly widesread, the subject for instance of Richard Brautigan’s famous poem, ‘All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace’ and one of the recurring ideas in the [[Leary-Snyder]] debate in [[Oracle No. 7]]."
    - this seems like a reference to [[san francisco oracle]]
  - [[a good-talking candle]]
    - "listened to its comfortable voice of light"
    - [[kasina]]
  - [[nine things]]
    - "knows four other things / one is the color of your hair"
  - [[a lady]]
    - [[highway 101]]
  - [[let’s voyage into the new american house]]
    - [[doors]]
      - "that want to be free from their hinges to fly with perfect clouds"
    - [[windows]]
      - "that want to be releases from their frames to run with the deer through back country meadows"
    - [[walls]]
      - "that want to prowl with the mountains through the early morning dusk"
    - [[floors]]
      - "that want to digest their furniture into flowers and trees"
    - [[roofs]]
      - "that want to travel gracefully with the starts through circles of darkness"
a [[film]]