Hi all,

Just thought I’d share my mental reflex to  Brautigan, which was, naturally, a vision of Keanu Reeves dripping with goo in The Matrix. (Hope this isn’t a spoiler!)

After some thought, there do seem to be a few fairly sturdy justifications of this connection…the Machines’ human harvest fields seem to align with the poem’s “cybernetic meadow” (line 3), and collectively they serve as a pessimistic manifestation of a “cybernetic ecology” (line 19).  Such an eco(techno?)system would certainly, in a sense, make us humans “free of our labors” (line 20)…to such an extent, in fact, that the user becomes the tool.

It is this sort of dark undertone that, as I read it, pervades the poem. But, maybe there is an argument that Brautigan’s speaker is a genuine optimist?

Cheers,

Jen