June 30th, June 30th

June 30th, June 30th is the most intimate book Richard Brautigan
has ever written. It is about his first trip to Japan in the spring of 1976 and
explores with wit and compassion the day-to-day realities of the human heart. This
book of poetry is also a unique look at Japan as seen through the eyes of one
of America’s most popular poets.

“What can I say? It is your work that has touched me the
most deeply, the least mannered and most exact in its insistent nakedness. It
is not a succession of lyrics but finally ONE BOOK. A long poem that offers us
its fragments. It is saturated with the ‘otherness’ we know to be our most
honest state and the true state of poetry. It offers itself in perhaps the
unconscious but ancient fabled form of the voyage. It is about the stately
courage and loneliness of this voyage into a strange land which is both Japan
and the true self of the poet, where there are no barriers to admitting and singing
all. It is about love and exhaustion and permanent transition, so fatal that it
is beyond the poet’s comprehension. I love the book because it is a true song, owning
no auspices other than its own; owning the purity we think we aim at on this
bloody journey.”

—Jim Harrison,
author of Wolf
and Farmer

Richard Brautigan’s latest book is Dreaming of Babylon: A Private Eye Novel 1942. Richard Brautigan’s
other books of poetry include The Pill
Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, Rommel
Drives On Deep into Egypt, and Loading
Mercury with a Pitchfork.

Richard Brautigan divides his life between San Francisco,
Montana, and Tokyo.