Please Plant This Book is the sixth volume of poetry published by American writer Richard Brautigan.
| Please Plant This Book | |
| Author: | Richard Brautigan |
| Cover Artist: | Bill Brock |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Genre: | Poetry |
| Publisher: | Richard Brautigan |
| Release Date: | 1968 |
| Media Type: | Print (Softcover) |
| Followed By: | The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster |
The collection consists of a glued folder containing eight seed packets, with a poem printed on the front of each.[1] The book was Brautigan's last self-publishing venture.[2] The edition had a run of 6,000 free copies.[3]
The eight poem titles and associated seed packets are as follows:[4] [5]
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.[6]
Brautigan's format and distribution methods reflected a rejection of standard copyright 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."[7] Scholar Chelsea Jennings writes, "[s]purning 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[8] 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."
This project was re-created for the Dinefwr Literature Festival, which took place in June 2012[9] in West Wales. 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 tree, nicknamed "the Brautigan pomegranate", was planted. Ianthe Brautigan, Brautigan's daughter, flew in from San Francisco to join in the celebrations.