Brautigan Response: The Draw of the Ocean in San Francisco

Richard Brautigan's poem "The Harbor" echoes a lot of the ocean imagery of Ferlighetti's San Francisco Poems and further develops the connection between San Francisco and freedom of expression, art, and love (105). Although some may consider this poem from Brautigan to be a generic love poem, it is far from his usual style and thus appears less generic and more honest and real. Compare this poem for instance with his poem titled “Love Poem,” which is more the anti-thesis of the generic love poems and carries the subtle sardonic tone of both his poems from The Pill vs. Springhill Mine Disaster and poetic prose from Trout Fishing in America.
“The Harbor,” explores the relation between those of San Francisco and aspects of the ocean through their connection at the “harbor’--both a geographical location as well as a figurative location. “Storms of love,” which tear lovers apart, and the “calms of love,” which return them to one another echo the back-and-forth motions of waves onto the shore. The poem’s speaker illustrates “[f]ish [swimming] between our ribs/ and sea gulls [crying] like mirrors/ to our blood,” suggesting the interconnectivity between the men of San Francisco and all life around them--especially within an ecosystem as diverse as a harbor. Additionally, this imagery intertwines not only man with animal, but also lover with lover as the animals bind ribs and blood of those being alluded to in the poem. Despite the distance created between the lovers and the harbor a few lines earlier (“I lie here in a harbor/ that does not know/ where your body ends/ and my body begins.”), the gap is closed through the lovers interconnectivity with the animal-life of the harbor.
Thus, the relationship developed with the harbor of the speaker is in tune with many of San Francisco, especially poets. The water and life of the ocean and it’s juxtaposition to bustling human life within a harbor has a poetic quality all it’s own that even Brautigan cannot deny, just as a San Franciscan cannot help but feel the pull of the tide.