The title of Brautigan’s poem, “All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace,” itself seems to read as ridiculous. Brautigan appears to mock the notion of technology and nature coexisting peacefully, almost giving machines the place of God as “compassionate protectors” and controllers of fate. In the first stanza, Brautigan compares “pure water touching clear sky” with “a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony.” While the former scene consists of two natural things (water, sky), the latter does not (mammals and computers together in nature?); it almost seems that Brautigan chose two very contrasting scenes to invalidate that comparison he was making in the first place. Through the verse “the sooner the better” (first stanza, second line), Brautigan seems to imply that the issue with technology is only going to get worse so the reasonable thing for all of us to do is to accept and advocate for a world where the natural and the man-made can coexist, as quickly as possible. It seems like he was quite reluctant to accept the idea himself, especially when he says “I like to think (
it has to be!)” in the first and second lines of the third stanza.
Brautigan’s poem could be considered as pro-technology as well. Each stanza contains the description of a picture where nature and technology exist side-by-side on peaceful and symbiotic terms, like the “cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics.” In the third stanza, Brautigan credits the “machines of loving grace” with watching over humans and freeing them of their labors. Those lines might suggest the possibility that machines could become efficient enough to carry out work to lighten the human load and thereby allow for time to bond with nature or return “to our mammal brothers and sisters.”
Personally, I feel Brautigan’s poem casts a negative light on technology in general. It could be that Brautigan wrote a poem that at first seems accepting of machinery to appease those who invited him to stay at Cal Tech. However, certain clues and the poem’s overall tone seems to entail a hidden, yet deeper meaning, one that does not necessarily promote the use of technology and its advances.
