I've always been moved by simplicity and depth.

Lately, I've been drawn back into the mad world of Richard Brautigan. Every now and then I revisit a collection of poems called Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt, a book I come back to when I need to remember who I am.

My copy is from 1970. The only thing holding it together is the masking tape at the spine. Most of the pages are dog-eared from my pausing at them over the years, and coffee stained. A few have been torn out and I'm not sure where they are now.

I always wondered where it had been before becoming mine.

This book was my first introduction to Brautigan when I was 16. His writing is so simple and so deep that it totally captures you in a matter of seconds, then you're hooked. If you're lucky, you find things, like these poems, that move you for a lifetime.

Start here and don't stop until you own everything he's ever written.