''Please Plant This Book'' is the sixth volume of poetry published by American writer

Richard Brautigan Richard Gary Brautigan (January 30, 1935) was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. He wrote throughout his life and published ten novels, two collections of short stories, and four books of poetry. Brautigan's work has been publi ...

. The collection consists of a glued folder containing eight seed packets, with a

poem Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...

printed on the front of each. The book was Brautigan's last self-publishing venture. The edition had a run of 6,000 free copies. The eight poem titles and associated seed packets are as follows: * California Native Flowers *

Calendula ''Calendula'' () is a genus of about 15–20 species''Calendula''.
Flora of China.

Carrot The carrot ('' Daucus carota'' subsp. ''sativus'') is a root vegetable, typically orange in colour, though heirloom variants including purple, black, red, white, and yellow cultivars exist, all of which are domesticated forms of the wild ...

s *

Lettuce Lettuce (''Lactuca sativa'') is an annual plant of the family Asteraceae mostly grown as a leaf vegetable. The leaves are most often used raw in Green salad, green salads, although lettuce is also seen in other kinds of food, such as sandwiche ...

* Sweet Alyssum Royal Carpet *

Squash Squash most often refers to: * Squash (sport), the high-speed racquet sport also known as squash racquets * Squash (plant), the fruit of vines of the genus ''Cucurbita'' Squash may also refer to: Sports * Squash (professional wrestling), an extr ...

* Shasta Daisy *

Parsley Parsley, or garden parsley (''Petroselinum crispum''), is a species of flowering plant in the family Apiaceae that is native to Greece, Morocco and the former Yugoslavia. It has been introduced and naturalisation (biology), naturalized in Eur ...

''Please Plant This Book'' employs many practices inspired by the countercultural group in San Francisco in the 1960s drawing on the ideology of the

Diggers The Diggers were a group of religious and political dissidents in England, associated with a political ideology and programme resembling what would later be called agrarian socialism.; ; ; Gerrard Winstanley and William Everard (Digger), Will ...

. Brautigan's format and distribution methods reflected a rejection of standard

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

practices. The book includes the statement: "THIS BOOK IS FREE. // Permission is granted to reprint this book by anyone as long as it is not sold." Scholar Chelsea Jennings writes, " urning copyright allowed poets to encourage faster and wider circulation of their work, but it also represented an intervention into property-based constructions of individual authorship." Brautigan's project is in conversation with other written artwork distributed freely by the poet Diane Di Prima in periodicals such as ''

Off Our Backs ''Off Our Backs'' (stylized in all lowercase; ''oob'') was an American radical feminist periodical that ran from 1970 to 2008, making it the longest-running feminist periodical in the United States. Marilyn Salzman-Webb and Marlene Wicks we ...

'' by examining the varying, interconnected meanings of 'free'. Jennings further observes that this work, through its explicit renouncement of copyright and its focus on sharing literal seeds, "reframed authorship in terms of creation and circulation rather than sale."

Dinefwr Literature Festival

This project was re-created for the Dinefwr Literature Festival, which took place in June 2012 in

West Wales West Wales () is a region of Wales. It has various definitions, either covering Pembrokeshire, Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire, which historically comprised the Welsh principality of ''Deheubarth'', and an alternative definition is to include Swa ...

. The start of the festival was celebrated through events inspired by the author. In addition to reprinting the poetry folders, the public was taken on a walk through the grounds where a

pomegranate The pomegranate (''Punica granatum'') is a fruit-bearing deciduous shrub in the family Lythraceae, subfamily Punica, Punicoideae, that grows between tall. Rich in symbolic and mythological associations in many cultures, it is thought to have o ...

tree, nicknamed "the Brautigan pomegranate", was planted. Ianthe Brautigan, Brautigan's daughter, flew in from

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

to join in the celebrations.

References

External links

Please Plant This Book
''diggers.org.'' Retrieved 2024-07-26 {{Richard Brautigan 1968 poetry books American poetry collections Works by Richard Brautigan