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 of ninety-eight poems includes thirty-eight that were previously uncollected. The rest were gathered from five of Brautigan's previous poetry publications.[1] In some cases, all of the poems from an earlier book were included in this volume.
The title poem uses just four lines to draw a parallel between the 1958 Springhill mining disaster in Springhill, Nova Scotia, and the use by the author's lover of birth control pills.[2]
When you take your pill
it's like a mine disaster.
I think of all the people
lost inside of you.
"The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster" (1968)[1]