"Please Plant This Book" was first distributed on
20th March 1968, 1st day of Spring festival in Golden Gate Park.
6000 copies were
made, funded (approx $500) by band Mad River out of their advance from Capitol
Records. Richard Brautigan had collaborated with them on spoken word/music
tracks, also had helped feed and support them when they first moved to San
Francisco and were broke and struggling.
Happy Birthday Richard Brautigan. He took his
own life after giving it to us in his words. 
Please Plant This Book is Richard Brautigan's sixth poetry publication. It consists of a folded and glued folder containing eight seed packets. On the front of each is a poem.
ReplyDeleteThe entire edition was offered for free distribution, and permission to reprint the collection was explicitly granted, as long as the new printing was also offered free-of-charge.
SWEET ALYSSUM ROYAL CARPET
I've decided to live in a world where
books are changed into thousands of
gardens with children playing
in the gardens and learning the gen-
tle ways of green growing things.
CALIFORNIA NATIVE FLOWERS
In this spring of 1968 with the last
third of the Twentieth Century
travelling like a dream toward its
end, it is time to plant books,
to pass them into the ground, so that
flowers and vegetables may grow
from these pages.
PARSLEY
I thank the energy, the gods and the
theater of history that brought
us here to this very moment with
this book in our hands, calling
like a future down a green and
starry hall.
SQUASH
The time is right to mix sentences
sentences with dirt and the sun
with punctuation and the rain with
verbs, and for worms to pass
through question marks, and the
stars to shine down on budding
nouns, and the dew to form on
paragraphs.
CALENDULA
My friends worry and they tell me
about it. They talk of the world
ending, of darkness and disaster.
I always listen gently, and then
say: No, it's not going to end. This
is only a beginning, as this book
is only a beginning.
CARROTS
I think the spring of 1968 is a good
time to look into our blood and
see where our hearts are flowing
as these flowers and vegetables
will look into their hearts evrey day
and see the sun reflecting like a
great mirror their desire to live
and be beautiful.
LETTUCE
The only hope we have is our
children and the seeds we give them
and the gardens we plant together.
SHASTA DAISY
I pray that in thirty-two years
passing that flowers and vegetables
will water the Twenty-First Cen-
tury with their voices telling that
they were once a book turned by
loving hands into life.
I looked this book up on Amazon. They have one used copy selling for $975. Ironic since it was meant to be given away for free originally.
ReplyDeleteOMG!
ReplyDeleteThat is very ironical.