''All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace'' is

Richard Brautigan Richard Gary Brautigan (January 30, 1935 – c. September 16, 1984) was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. A prolific writer, he wrote throughout his life and published ten novels, two collections of short stories, and four bo ...

's fifth poetry publication. Like several of his early works, the entire edition (of 1,500 copies) was distributed for free. The title poem envisions a world where

cybernetics Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics is named after an example of circular causal feedback, that of steering a ship, where the helmsperson m ...

has advanced to a stage where it allows a return to the

balance of nature The balance of nature, also known as ecological balance, is a theory that proposes that ecological systems are usually in a stable equilibrium or homeostasis, which is to say that a small change (the size of a particular population, for example) w ...

and an elimination of the need for human labor. All thirty-two of the poems in this collection were republished in ''

The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster ''The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster'' is Richard Brautigan's seventh poetry publication. A limited, signed, hard cover edition of fifty copies was issued simultaneously with the soft cover version of the first edition. The collection ...

''.

Copyleft statement

In the original 1967 publication, Brautigan included a

copyleft Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose, ...

statement which retains copyright but grants permission to reprint any poem in ''All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace'' on one condition:

© Copyright 1967 by Richard Brautigan 

Permission is granted to reprint
any of these poems in magazines,
books and newspapers if they are
given away free.

Cultural references

The title was later used by Tucson, Arizona

industrial rock Industrial rock is a fusion genre that fuses industrial music and rock music. It initially originated in the 1970s, and drew influence from early experimental and industrial acts such as Cromagnon, Throbbing Gristle, Einstürzende Neubauten a ...

band

Machines of Loving Grace Machines of Loving Grace was an American industrial rock band from Tucson, Arizona, best known for their song "Butterfly Wings". History Formation Named after the Richard Brautigan poem "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace", Machines ...

, formed in 1989, and in its full form by British musician

Martin Carr Martin Carr (born 29 November 1968) is an English musician and writer who was the chief songwriter and lead guitarist with the band The Boo Radleys. Born in Thurso, Scotland, he was raised in Wallasey, England. Life and career Carr was born i ...

as the title of a 2004 album, by the musician Martha Tilston for the title of her album "Machines Of Love And Grace", as well as a 2011 television series by documentary maker

Adam Curtis Adam Curtis (born 26 May 1955) is an English documentary filmmaker. Curtis began his career as a conventional documentary producer for the BBC throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s. The release of ''Pandora's Box (British TV series), ...

. ''Machines of Loving Grace'' is also the title of a 2015 nonfiction book by

John Markoff John Gregory Markoff (born October 24, 1949) is a journalist best known for his work covering technology at ''The New York Times'' for 28 years until his retirement in 2016, and a book and series of articles about the 1990s pursuit and capture ...

, documenting robotics transforming society.

References

External links

* * {{Richard Brautigan 1967 poetry books Works by Richard Brautigan American poetry collections