FreeVerse: "It’s Raining In Love" by Richard Brautigan
by Jenners • 03/10/2010 • Poetry • 8 Comments
Hosted by Cara at Ooh…Books!Did I ever tell you I used to publish a zine? (A zine is a term for self-published magazines … kind of like a precursor to blogging.) It was really a newsletter for my friends to keep in touch after college, and I wrote book and music reviews, shared poetry, interviewed people, had a question of the month and all kinds of other goofy things. It ended up expanding a little beyond my own circle of friends, and I was really into it for awhile before it ended up being too much work and I shut it down. (Some of my friends who remember my zine, which was titled without permission, said of my blog when I started up: “It’s like without permission but on steroids.”)
Anyway, this very long story is to tell you that I was going through my zine archives and I thought I’d start sharing some of the poems I published in it for FreeVerse. This first one is by a writer called Richard Brautigan. (Check out his biography by clicking on the link; it is kind of sad.) I can’t remember where exactly I “discovered” him, but the poem below was one of the ones that appeared in my zine. In rereading it, I still like it, and it takes me back to those awful awful days of dating, when I was always the one who like the guy more than he liked me. I think this poem does a fantastic job of capturing that imbalance of love in relationships.
It’s Raining In Love
by Richard Brautigan
I don’t know what it is,
but I distrust myself
when I start to like a girl
a lot.
It makes me nervous.
I don’t say the right things
or perhaps I start
to examine,
evaluate,
compute
what I am saying.
If I say, “Do you think it’s going to rain?”
and she says, “I don’t know,”
I start thinking: Does she really like me?
In other words
I get a little creepy.
A friend of mine once said,
“It’s twenty times better to be friends
with someone
than it is to be in love with them.”
I think he’s right and besides,
it’s raining somewhere, programming flowers
and keeping snails happy.
That’s all taken care of.
BUT
if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like,
“Do you think it’s going to rain?”
and I say, “It beats me,”
and she says, “Oh,”
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky,
I think: Thank God, it’s you, baby, this time
instead of me.
Can you relate to being the one more in love than your partner was? Did you ever have it flip around and feel the sense of relief that you weren’t the one more invested in the relationship?
The angst of relationship survival is a day to day battle in that "early hunting for the right one" years. Interesting poem.
Such a sad and odd little poem! But I can relate to it just the same.
I think without permission is a very cool name. I tried to do a zine for my family one time when I was young and I only did it once but what I remember about it is that it had a photo of my dad coming home from work on the cover. That's all I remember!
Why am I not surprised that you used to publish a zine!!! I love the poem and have found myself on both sides of that kind of equation!
OMG we're brain triplets! Cause J.T. Just linked me to this and I'm so glad there are other zine-makers out there. I just made my first one and stuck it in a prize pack.
I can relate too well to the love imbalance thing (I tend to like guys more than they like me, but if it starts to swing the other way I run for the hills).
Does anyone remember that old Nickelodeon cartoon Rocket Power? The girl in it Reggie, she used to make a zine. Except it looked kinda profesh. ish.
OMG Jenners! We're brain twins! I didn't write about my old 'zine in FreeVerse, but I was just looking at a few of the old copies that I still have around here this afternoon!
I liked the poem and it just made me SO glad all that "relationship" stuff is waaaay in the past!
Quid and I just tacked our FreeVerse entries onto last week. If Cara puts one up later today I'll link there, too.
Never heard the term zine before.
Been there done that, I always seemed to be the one who liked more. A kind of depressing poem but one I'm sure many will identify with.
Gee that's sort of depressing! BUT not as depressing as it had the potential for being, with unrequited love and all… Thanks for sharing from your zine!!!