He was 87.. "[citation needed]. He had long hair, and I had long hair. At left, Mr. McClure in 1972. The answer to feeling is my feeling.The answer to joy is joy without feeling.The room is a multicolored cherubof air and bright colors. Michael, perhaps enviably, due to the unique status the beat generation occupies in American letters, has a more civilian audience, amateurs and non-practitioners, fans who appreciate art for its own sake rather as grist for their own practice and he still put up good poetry numbers in terms of sales. Walking I step higher in carefulness. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area hills with his wife the sculptor Amy Evans McClure. There was primal wildness in the upstanding coarse (not sleek as it really is in Africa) fur on the knobby, powerful-like-buffalo shoulders. It's the mystery of the hunt that intrigues me, That drives us like lemmings, but cautiously The search for a bright square cloudthe scent of lemon verbena Or to learn rules for the game the sea otters With the help of her friend Bob Neuwirth, she gave it her own tongue-in-cheek spin, called it Mercedes Benz and recorded it a cappella on her album Pearl, which was released posthumously in 1971. The lyre-guitar was covered with square plastic buttons in rows of given sizes and shapes. McClures advantage is Sheer Scope McClure played a Hells Angel in Norman Mailers film Beyond the Law. There is no Soul. A selection of his papers is held at the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley and at the Special Collections & Rare Books at Bennett Library, Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. He lived across the bay [in Oakland], so I had very little contact with Michael. Academy of American Poets, 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038. My mind is fingers holding a pen, he once wrote. Michael Thomas McClure was born on Oct. 20, 1932, in Marysville, Kan., northwest of Topeka, to Thomas and Marion (Johnston) McClure. "McClure manages a series of discoveries, and his language strikes with almost flintlike suddenness and brilliance. We had gone beyond a point of no return and we were ready for it, for a point of no return. Concurrently with The Mad Cub, I was reading his long poem Dark Brown (1961), in the 1967 Dave Haselwood Books edition, whose offhandedly titled INTRO FOR DARK BROWN begins: I am told that personalities must interact, and yet interaction is a process of the mind. McClures poetry is a blob of protoplasmic energy. Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure shares a place with the great William Blake, with the visionary Shelley, with the passionate D.H. Lawrence Robert Creeley, What appeals to me most about Michaels poems is the fury and imagery of them. Michael McClure, "the young poet recruited to put together the famed Six Gallery readings in 1955 that launched the San Francisco Renaissance and the legend of the Beats," died May 4, the Chronicle reported. McClure also released albums of his work with minimalist composer Terry Riley. His many books of poetry include Jaguar Skies, Dark Brown, Huge Dreams, Rebel Lions, Rain Mirror and Plum Stones. To an audience of perhaps 150 people (the number varies in the tellings), Mr. McClure read a poem called For the Death of 100 Whales, said to have been inspired by a report that bored American soldiers stationed in Iceland had amused themselves by shooting a pod of whales. Francis Crick, discoverer of the DNA double helix, This poetry is soulful freedom at play in the Desire-realm Michaels use of centering is as singular as it is signature; I know of only a few poets who have made use of this formhis near-contemporaries Ronald Johnson and Gustaf Sobin, for example, or more recently Ish Kleinbut none who have made it so fundamental a part of their work as McClure. McClure's honors included a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Alfred Jarry Award, as well as a Rockefeller grant for playwriting and an Obie Award for Best Play. In Jack Kerouac's autobiographical novel Big Sur, he based the character Pat McLear on McClure. The day Michael was cremated, I read his copy of his autobiographical novel The Mad Cub (1970), on the second page of which he writes, I can hardly walk or hold a coffee cup I am so eaten by self-consciousness. I was struck by this sentence because it accorded so thoroughly with my sense of him. are poems and long passages from nine of the authors earlier collections. As his editor for Mephistos & Other Poems (2016), I can attest to how deliberate his placement of lines could be: a series of tabs and spacebars nightmarish to prepare to import into InDesign. He lives in Oakland 's Bay Area hills with his wife the sculptor Amy Evans McClure. McClure has written twenty plays and musicals which are performed in the U.S. and abroad. An erotic serial poem in three major movements, Dark Brown finds McClure reveling in the freedom of expression newly won for poetry by Howl and Other Poems (1956), applying his philosophical monism to the union of self and other in the act of making love. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. But its a way of changing your mindset when you come to it.. Michael McClure (born October 20, 1932) is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. He has a cameo in Peter Fondas Hired Hand. I am smiling. The role model for Jim Morrison, as the Los Angeles Times characterized Michael McClure, has found sources in music from Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis to the composer Terry Riley with whom his poetry performances frequently share a bill. He gave his first poetry reading in 1955 alongside Allen Ginsberg, who gave his first public reading of "Howl," when McClure organized the famous Six Gallery readings which would launch the legend of the Beat Poets and the San Francisco Renaissance. An introduction to themid-century countercultural poets who helped define a generation. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. We followed the Aepyorni across the old wooden bridge made of huge timbers. His mammalism, moreover, entails a clear rejection of anthrocentrism, as Gary Snyder said during our phone call. Getting to know Michael was unlike getting to know other poets of comparable stature, Philip Lamantia, say, or David Meltzer. Witnesses offer conflicting accounts, Mars Voltas lead singer broke with Scientology and reunited with the band. (Hed quit drinking decades ago.) The poet is featured in Scorceses Last Waltz, in which his reading of a poem by Chaucer lilted, rolled, and seduced the audience into the lyric tonality of Middle English (Atlanta Poetry Review). But Lane Moores new book will help you find your people, How Judy Blumes Margaret became a movie: Time travel and no streamers, for a start, What would you do to save a marriage? The works reveal McClure grounded in the requirements of the villanelle, but in "Premonition," he expresses his need to soar and fly. (Remember this is a dream.) His fame grew because of another poet in attendance: Its where Allen Ginsberg gave his first reading of his ground-breaking poem Howl. The last remaining living poet who read there is Gary Snyder, who turns 90 on May 8. He took part in the storied San Francisco reading where Allen Ginsberg unveiled a version of Howl. He went on to have his own moments of fame and notoriety. The play has enjoyed particular success in London, having been produced there twice. Oh Lord, wont you buy me a Mercedes-Benz, the memorable lyrics, credited to all three, begin. The play tells of a fictional encounter in the blue velvet of eternity between Billy the Kid and Jean Harlow and is a theatrical exploration of his "Meat Politics" theory, in which all human beings are "bags of meat." Michael McClure (October 20, 1932 May 4, 2020) was an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. I could tell that he genuinely liked me, that he even felt affection for me, but at the same time there were vast Midwestern reserves within him. His battles with the church arent over, How Palm Springs ran out Black and Latino families to build a fantasy for rich, white people, 17 SoCal hiking trails that are blooming with wildflowers (but probably not for long! (Like several poets Ive known who were born in the 30s, Michael used the computer like a typewriter.) As he wrote in his 1963 poem The Child, Who were the lion men with faces of fur / and manes / who bent by my crib to bless me?. of a spider thread. On Facebook, All the charges were dropped and the subsequent appeal lost. Lewis Mac Adams, L.A. Weekly, Michael McClure shares a place with the great William Blake, with the visionary Shelley, with the passionate D.H. Lawrence He spent much of his childhood in Seattle but returned to Kansas with his mother and stepfather, finishing high school in Wichita. No Import Fees Deposit & $9.66 Shipping to Germany. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We both looked, holding hands, and I felt your wide-eyed drinking-in of things. ", McClure happened to meet British playwright, Harold Pinter, who then gave words of support to the play, which helped it become noticed and gave courage to those who staged its first production in San Francisco in 1965.[8]. Ginsberg, in his singular phrasing, praised McClures work as a blob of protoplasmic energy.. Every night the actors got two ovations from the enthusiastic packed house, The Edmonton Journal of Canada recalled in 2005 when The Beard was being revived there, one when the play ended and one when they were escorted out the door and into the paddy wagon to be booked.. She mocks his masculinity, and he tells her she is envious of his beauty. California College of the Arts for over 40 years. Peter Fonda). For McClure, I think, centering his poems paralleled the competing but not necessarily contradictory paradigms of abstract expressionism: art as an expression of its own objecthood and art as a record of its own creation. Robert Creeley, What appeals to me most about Michaels poems is the fury and imagery of them Then, he said, "I put the poster up on fences, windows, and in liquor stores where boxing posters would be, and put one up behind my head in the room I worked in at the time, which overlooked the bridge and the ocean. He took us inside and he played an instrument like a guitar and he danced as he played it. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets (including Allen Ginsberg) who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955 rendered in barely ficti. A then 22-year-old McClure helped organize the famous Six Gallery beat poetry reading on Oct. 7, 1955, and later read at the Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park that launched the Summer of Love in . The American Civil Liberties Union took the case and represented the actors. Mr. McClures play The Beard, first performed in 1965 in San Francisco, caused censorship uproars there and in other cities where it was staged over the next decade. But the actual interview would be a combination of him talking and reading prewritten passages that formulated what he wanted to say with some precision. He had an eleven-year run as playwright-in-residence with San Francisco's Magic Theatre where his operetta "Minnie Mouse and the Tap-Dancing Buddha" had an extended run. McClure's journalism has been featured in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The L.A. Times and The San Francisco Chronicle. I hearthe music of myself and write it downfor no one to read. The youngest member of the Beats, McClure authored over thirty books of poetry, plays, and prose, and is considered a key literary figure of the second half of the twentieth century. Included in. Clear the senses bright sitting in the black chair Rocker the white walls reflecting the color of cloudsmoving over the sun. On a lighter note, a fragment of a ditty that Mr. McClure would sing in gatherings with friends, improvising new lyrics each time, found its way to Janis Joplin. The play is currently out of print in both the US and UK. [9], McClure during the video taping of "Add-Verse", 2004, Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Time Out talks to beat poet Michael McClure ahead of the London revival of his play, Michael McClure, famed Beat poet who helped launch the SF Renaissance, dead at 87, Michael McClure & Ray Manzarek official website, "Add-Verse" a poetry-photo-video project McClure participated in, Photograph, Michael McClure, 1951, with David Haselwood and Lee Streiff, Wichita, KS, Records of Michael McClure are held by Simon Fraser University's Special Collections and Rare Books. The evening may have belonged to Mr. Ginsberg, but Mr. McClure had his own moments of fame and notoriety in the ensuing years. A full body orgasm at the L.A. Phil? I pass fantasies as theysing to me with Circe-Voices. My heart rose in my chest (as the metaphysical poets say "with purple wings of joy.") He has published four collections of essays, which include notes on Bob Dylan and environmental issues. The room is a multicolored cherub of air and bright colors. I. The two Giant BirdsAepyornifrom Madagascar, extincted A.D. one thousand, turned and walked from us across the bridge. He was 87. The play has played a role in U.S. censorship and free speech battles since 1966 when it won the first lawsuit. Then I found that on the bridge we were among a herd of black WildebeestsBlack Gnus. Michael McClure on his 25th volume of poetry and more. He has made two television documentaries The Maze and September Blackberries and is featured in several films including The Last Waltz (dir. McClure is the author of the Afterword in Jerry Hopkins's and Danny Sugerman's seminal Doors biography, No One Here Gets Out Alive. But reading this through the lens of The Mad Cub suddenly brought into focus the highly specific personal symbolism running throughout his body of workall his talk of meat and lions Id just taken as given upon first encountering itas well as the equally idiosyncratic formal qualities of his poems. Michael McClure, who at 22 helped usher in the Beat movement as part of a famed poetry reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco, then went on to a long and varied career as a poet, playwright, novelist and lyricist, died on Monday at his home in Oakland, Calif. McClure is still active as a poet, essayist and playwright and lives with his second wife, Amy, in the San Francisco Bay Area. McClures performances include Rome; Paris; Tokyo; London, a bull ring in Mexico City, The Whitney Museum, and a steam room in Nairobi for a group of African businessmen. I see the secret and distinctpatterns of smoke from my mouthI am without care part of all. Mr. McClure was one of the poetry readers at the Six Gallery, a former auto repair shop that had been turned into an art gallery, on Oct. 7, 1955, a date that Beatdom magazine, marking the 60th anniversary of the event, called arguably one of the most important dates in American literature.. They appeared with saxophonist David Sanborn on NBC-TV performing a jazz version of McClures Love Lion Blues. Mystic Fire released a 70-minute video of the duo and a compact disk, Love Lion, followed. Over coffee with Mr. Ginsberg, whom he had met at a party, he lamented that he didnt have time because he and his first wife were expecting a child. Selected poems by Michael McClure . With singers Janis Joplin and Bob Neuwirth, McClure wrote the song Mercedes Benz, in which Joplin sings, Oh, Lord, wont you buy me a Mercedes Benz? The rejection of this humanism in favor of what Ferlinghetti terms mammalism finds its idealized totemic expression in McClures veneration of the lion, seen as a creature with no separation between thought and action, coupled with the sheer muscular power to successfully execute the intent manifest in its actions. discoverer of the DNA double helix Francis Crick, This poetry is soulful freedom at play in the Desire-realm Gary Snyder, Without McClures roar there would have been no Sixties. Dennis Hopper, One of our best and wisest bard/scholars. Amy arranged for me to call Michaels fellow Six Gallery reader Gary Snyder, himself just turned 90. I loved the old guy and knew him as well as I was able, but I dont know that I knew him well. It's the mystery of the hunt that intrigues me, That drives us like lemmings, but cautiously The search for a bright square cloudthe scent of lemon verbena Or to learn rules for the game the sea otters Play in the surf. He had a long and varied career as a poet, playwright, novelist and lyricist. Michael, granted, was 80 by the time we started hanging out, older than either of them had been, though Id become fast friends with Richard O. Moore when he was 90, so Im not sure age was the determining factor. There was a problem loading your book clubs. It debuted at the Actor's Workshop Theatre in San Francisco on the December 18, 1965. I close my eyes in divinity and pain.I blink in solemnity and unsolemn joy.I smile at myself in my movements. McClure has made two television documentaries The Maze and September Blackberries. He has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Obie Award for Best Play, an NEA grant, the Alfred Jarry Award and a Rockefeller grant for playwriting. The roomsnot important but like divisions of all spaceof all hideousness and beauty. To add the following enhancements to your purchase, choose a different seller. McClure was a close friend of The Doors lead singer Jim Morrison and is generally acknowledged as having been responsible for promoting Morrison as a poet. The pain in my stomachis warm and tender. McClure has worked extensively with his old friend Ray Manzarek, the Doors keyboardist, at festivals and colleges and clubs. This seemingly anti-mind, anti-soul statement is curious coming from a poet of such obvious erudition and mysticism as Michael, and I didnt get what he was driving at while he was still alive. The pain in my stomach is warm and tender. A poet of and for our time, his own formal structuresthe shape of his poems and his highly charged breath-linenevertheless look back to the classics, to the Provenal troubadours, and to the Romantic verse of Blake, Keats, and Shelley. Barry Miles famously referred to McClure as "the Prince of the San Francisco Scene". The Beard is a notably controversial modern play that explores the nature of seduction and attraction, portraying an explosive confrontation between two legendary figures: Jean Harlow, the platinum blonde movie star, and Billy the Kid, the baby-faced outlaw with a hair trigger. Trees with white trunks make plumes on rock ridges. His play The Beard provoked numerous censorship battles in Los Angeles; the cast was arrested after each performance for fourteen nights in a row. McClures, is the first major retrospective collection of a poet and Obie-winning playwright associated with the San Francisco Renaissance from its start as well as the early Beat movement. The answer to joy is joy without feeling. Michael McClure, who at 22 helped usher in the Beat movement as part of a famed poetry reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco, then went on to a long and varied career as a poet,. It is these small thingsand the secret behind them That fill the heart. McClure's first book of poetry, Passage, was published in 1956 by small press publisher Jonathan Williams. The bridge was dark from the shadows of the poplars and the evergreens there. Yet he grew warm, wending lyrical words around the air and across the hall, the coolness fell away with his simple elegance in word and presentation". WITHINendless spacein tiny explosions of gasolinemy consciousness hardens into a wall.I AM SEPARATEfrom plum blossoms and mountains:aching teeth become moviesas I growyoung again. The mind drifts through in the shape of a museum, in the guise of a museum dreaming dead friends: Jim, Tom, Emmet, Bill. That night at the Six Gallery greatly inspired us to go ahead.. One of McCure's readings was to, and with, lions at the San Francisco Zoo a film of it can be seen on his website. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. complex. Michael McClure reads a brief excerpt from Geoffrey Chaucer's General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. He had one daughter from his first marriage to Joanna McClure. The pain is many pointed, without anguish. He holds his book in one hand while another is stretched heavenward, not unlike a preachers. McClures poetry combined spontaneity, typographical experimentation, Buddhist practice, and body language to merge the ecstatic and the corporeal. His novels include The Mad Cub (1970), a sexual coming-of-age story. Ferlinghetti supported the Beats, publishing their works, including Howl and Other Poems, but he doesnt consider himself a Beat poet. McClure's songs include "Mercedes Benz", popularized by Janis Joplin, and new songs which were performed by Riders on the Storm, a band that consisted of Manzarek and Doors guitarist Robbie Krieger. McClures thinking is brave, obdurate, passionate, Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon, [{"displayPrice":"$10.92","priceAmount":10.92,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"10","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"92","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"XSFkt%2B%2Fy%2F8J4dS8KU3gVEWTbpjoboW9GT2u6HFe5gAd5XyaByiBtm%2F1%2F8RpFVgkGcpvunlmZAQzvl%2BBZ%2BVMxgaRWtGXY0vn22Sgk4AG%2FBrIwb0bRvXAnYg7aAWvgU1Gt2XEgOnsQ4dY%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW"}]. I am separate. Imagine Norman Mailer mated with Gertrude Stein and you have the picture.. Michael McClure died from complications following a stroke last year, so it does not appear that his death was caused by coronavirus, but I do wish to know what he thought about the current pandemic, since his entire poetic career was suffused with awareness of the power of the wide natural world. Michael McClures travels include Africa, Mexico, South America, India, Thailand and Japan. Gloria Graham 2004 during the taping of Add-Verse. The poet is featured in Scorcese's Last Waltz, in which he recites a poem by Chaucer in Middle English" McClure created two television documentaries - The Maze and September Blackberries. On the one hand, Michaels poems never disappear visually, the way a left-justified poem arguably does. A trove of rare photographs of the Beats finds a new home. YouTube. and filled with dark chocolate cake. He felt an affinity with the Beat poets, but I really didnt see it. City Lights did publish McClures work, most recently Mephistos and Other Poems (2016). The play tells of a fictional encounter between Billy the Kid and Jean Harlow and is a theatrical exploration of his "Meat Politics" theory, in which all human beings are "bags of meat". His fourteen books of poetry include Jaguar Skies, Dark Brown, Huge Dreams, Rebel Lions, Rain Mirror and Plum Stones. Distinct. This cool cat in a natty vest, cigarette in hand, was in the right place at the right time. Please try again. No answers. [3] Stan Brakhage, a friend of McClure, stated in the Chicago Review that: McClure always, and more and more as he grows older, gives his reader access to the verbal impulses of his whole body's thought (as distinct from simply and only brain-think, as it is with most who write). )Flung blood and sperm.Incense.Gnashed at their tails and brothers,Cursed Christ of mammals,Snapped at the sun,Ran for the seas floor. Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club thats right for you for free. McClure had the good fortune, though, to be at City Lights in 1965 with Ginsberg and musicians Bob Dylan and Robbie Robertson. But I confirmed the news with his wife, sculptor Amy Evans McClure, and then, because Michael is famous on a pop-cultural level unavailable to most poets, I had to act: alert City Lights, factcheck a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, draft copy for the bookstore window and social media. DEATH IS COMPRISED OF DEEP BLUE TORTURESand filled with dark chocolate cake.Birth has gone with the lossesof endless imagination.A round brown leaf whirls at the tipof a spider thread. The Times once called him a role model for Jim Morrison. The instrument would make any sound, play any blues, make any creature sound, play any melodyI wanted it badlyit was a joy.