Brautigan’s Worsewick

Brautigan is a provocative poet that likes to push the limits and throw our minds a curve ball. He rouses us all with images of raunchy pornographic scenes but on other pages surprises us with sweet and gentle love poems such as, “Map Shower” and “The Horse That Had a Flat Tire.” He enjoys misleading us with titles such as “Love Poem” and the “Beautiful poem” that are good examples of how we all jump to conclusions. One of the raunchiest passages of Brautigan’s, one that scared me a bit, is “Worsewick.”

The image is a young couple with a baby that decide to go skinny dipping in a polluted, murky water hot spring that is full of green slime and dead floating fish. Sounds like a terrible porno, I know. The father/husband is describing the events from his perspective. The passage is against the cookie-cutter conventional idea of a beautiful hideaway spring in the wilderness with singing birds and clean rejuvenating water. Worsewick is “nothing fancy.” The passage is an anti-pastoral, anti-puritanical, but none the less about an almost romantic scene. All though some images are terribly upsetting, such as when the man ejaculates, and a dead fish with stiff, glaring iron eyes stares at him as it bobs along in his semen. The general idea is quixotic and “tender”: Two lovers, isolated in a moment giving themselves to one another submitting to their ardent passions. The woman is portrayed as a sexual entity that is present for his taking, “the deerflies were at her, and then it was my turn.” This perspectives reappears in Brautigan’s other works.

I believe that this couple represents most of man kind. They are surrounded by pollution, desolation, and filth, but they are comfortable with it. “We played and relaxed in the water. The green slime and the dead fish played and relaxed with us…” Most people are aware of the destruction of nature all around them, but generally most individuals are at easy. They are not out raged nor disgusted. They simple keep living their lives and adapt to the tainted environment that is around them. The world is going down the toilet and people are ok with it. As long as they may still fornicate.

Thanks to Brautigan I no longer believe that a poem with a nice title like “Love Poem” will be about love until I read it.


Question:
It has come to my attention that dead fish is a common occurrence and agenda in “Trout Fishing in America.” For me, they represent a form of ruined nature and balance. What do you believe they represent?