Of course my favorite poet/novelist would have to be someone as bizarre and offbeat as Richard Brautigan, a schizophrenic alcoholic, who's poetry was mostly a diverse collection of his everyday outlandish thoughts. He had a brilliant way of taking your tiny everday epiphany and creating a much more true to form description. I wouldn't call him a tortured soul more than I would a fucked up weirdo, but damn, the man could really give you a wild perspective.
That is probably my favorite aspect of a human being. Someone who has the ability to paint a different picture in my head. I have my own whirlwind of graphic detailed thoughts and Jackson Pollock like visuals of splattered colors, but when somebody else hands you a type of clarity you couldn't perceive on your own, it is like stepping onto another planet and breathing in the freshest air you've ever inhaled.
Unfortunately almost all my heros are dead, and Richard Brautigan is one of them. He shot himself in the head with a 44 magnum the same year I was born. It is said he left a suicide note which read "Messy, isn't it?"
"The sun was like a huge 50-cent piece that someone had poured kerosene on and then had lit with a match, and said, "Here, hold this while I go get a newspaper," and put the coin in my hand, but never came back." -Richard Brautigan
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