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. I am a snake and a tiptoe feather at opposite ends of the scales as they balance themselves against each other. McClure, who died May 4 at 87 after suffering a stroke last year, was a countercultural figure who was present, Zelig-like, at key moments in San Francisco's Beat heyday and beyond. His natural reserve was exacerbated by fame, insofar as it had made him cautious, for fear of being misquoted or quoted out of context. I pass fantasies as theysing to me with Circe-Voices. . Rivers of sand are memories. 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. A reviewer of a recent London reading wrote, McClures West Coast delivery was deliberate, cool, spacious The Journal-World in Lawrence Kansas offered these observations of McClure at the William Burroughs celebration, McClure looked cool. What the Six Gallery really did was show us that there was an audience out there that really wanted to hear poetry off the page, he told The Washington Post in 2017. The Times once called him a role model for Jim Morrison. The answer to joy is joy without feeling. Albums include Classic Albums: The Doors, Love Lion, and The Last Waltz. I hearthe music of myself and write it downfor no one to read. SoundCloud and I see the secret and distinct patterns of smoke from my mouth I am without care part of all. McClures advantage is Sheer Scope and was embraced in London and Paris. . Michael McClure (born October 20, 1932) is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. Ive interviewed many artists over the years and here again Michael is singular. Michael McClure was born on October 20, 1932. 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." The Mystery of the Hunt McClure performed spoken word poetry concerts with Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek until the latter's death in 2013; several albums of their work have been released. Tales in Martin Scorsese's film The Last Waltz , McClure has written . Beat poet, playwright, novelist, and documentary filmmaker Michael McClure was born in Marysville, Kansas, and raised there and in Seattle. I loved the old guy and knew him as well as I was able, but I dont know that I knew him well. McClure's first book of poetry, Passage, was published in 1956 by small press publisher Jonathan Williams. McClure would later court controversy as a playwright with his play The Beard. March 16, 2003. beat poet , Michael McClure in Oakland Hills. McClure worked extensively with his friend Ray Manzarek, the Doors keyboardist, at festivals, colleges and clubs. [6][7], McClure said that he was inspired to write the play by a vision that came to him of a poster advertising a boxing match between Jean Harlow and Billy the Kid. Martin Scorsese) where he reads from The Canterbury Tales; Beyond the Law (dir. Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt, Poetry, Michael McClure has said, is not a system but is real events spoken of, or happening, in sounds. And for thirty years, whether in his early Dionysian lyrics or his evolving bio-alchemical wisdom, his work has shown a ferocious energy and driving physicality. 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 fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums. His books of poetry include Jaguar Skies, Dark Brown, Huge Dreams, Rebel Lions, Mysteriosos, and Of Indigo and Saffron. 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. Black-and-white photographs of the gathering only added to McClures aura. McClure was the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Persian Pony (2017), Mephistos and Other Poems (2016), Of Indigo and Saffron (2011), Mysteriosos and Other Poems (2010), Rebel Lions (1991), and The New Book/A Book of Torture (1961). Mr. McClure lived near the Six Gallery. He was so good-looking, he should have been a movie star instead of a poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti told The Times by phone. "This essential collection of Michael McClure's poetry contains the most original, radical, and visionary work of a major poet who has been garnering acclaim and generating controversy for more than fifty years. McClure reads with an actors command and a singers timing, his impact transports audiences to a very different and intriguing place. He has given hundreds of reading in venues as varied as the Fillmore Ballroom, Yale University, Stanford, The National Biodiversity Conference at the Smithsonian, and the Library of Congress. In 1968, actor Rip Torn directed a notable production at The Royal Court Theatre and it has most recently been revived at a smaller venue, the Old Red Lion Theatre in 2006 under the direction of Nic Saunders with new music by Terry Riley. New Directions Publishing Corporation, $10.95 (134pp) ISBN 978--8112-1265-6 . We had gone beyond a point of no return and we were ready for it, for a point of no return. McClures world-wide performances include Rome; Paris; Tokyo; Lawrence, Kansas, London, a bull ring in Mexico City, The Whitney Museum, and a steam room in Nairobi for a group of African businessmen. The American Civil Liberties Union took the case and represented the actors. Instagram, McClure's journalism has been featured in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The L.A. Times and The San Francisco Chronicle. 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. The poet Michael McClure, left, with Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg in San Francisco in 1965. There was a problem loading your book clubs. Oh Lord, wont you buy me a Mercedes-Benz, the memorable lyrics, credited to all three, begin. 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. 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. 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 final book, Mule Kick Blues, will appear in the spring from City Lights.) Not only an awareness of nature, but the poems are organized in an organic fashion, continuing with his appreciation of nature's purity. 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". they turned and walked away from us and you were there Jane and you were twenty-two but this was the nineteen-forties, in Wichita, near the edge of town, in a field The origin story of the famed reading varies depending on the teller, but Mr. McClure said he had initially been asked to organize the event. 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. I interviewed him twice, once for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, once for the Poetry Foundation, and both times his approach was the same. His work as a novelist includes the autobiographical The Mad Cub and The Adept. His play The Beard provoked numerous censorship battles in Los Angeles; the cast was arrested after each performance for fourteen nights in a row. Then I turned and viewed across the darkening field and there was a huge flightless hunting fowl (the kind that ate mammals in the Pliocene). Why is Frank McCourt really pushing it? I close my eyes in divinity and pain.I blink in solemnity and unsolemn joy.I smile at myself in my movements. He said the same about McClure. His novels include The Mad Cub (1970), a sexual coming-of-age story. McClure played a Hells Angel in Norman Mailers film Beyond the Law. Clear the senses bright sitting in the black chair Rocker the white walls reflecting the color of cloudsmoving over the sun. 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. Witnesses offer conflicting accounts, Mars Voltas lead singer broke with Scientology and reunited with the band. The pattern, the spirit, the fiery demon That link them together And pull their freedom into our senses, The smell of a shrub, a cloud, the action of animals The rising, the exuberance, when the mystery is unveiled. In Jack Kerouac's autobiographical novel Big Sur, he based the character Pat McLear on McClure. onto a warm hood;and less intelligentthan the thinblackspider in the morning sinkbefore breakfast time. On the one hand, Michaels poems never disappear visually, the way a left-justified poem arguably does. 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? His novels are The Mad Cub and The Adept. I figured Michael was one of those famous people for whom fame is a burden, even as he made shrewd use of it to advance his artistic endeavors. He spent much of his childhood in Seattle but returned to Kansas with his mother and stepfather, finishing high school in Wichita. GONE in the hole where soul swells into nothing leaving solid space where profiles of gods and fairies are carved and finely polished by the clanking of trucks, thunder-shaking waves, and the taste of mangos. Michael McClure at his home in Oakland in 2010. Distinct. Other plays include Josephine The Mouse Singer and VKTMS. My friends all have Porsches; I must make amends.. He made two television documentaries The Maze and September Blackberries and was featured in several films, including Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz (1978), where he recites from The Canterbury Tales; Norman Mailer's Beyond the Law (1968); and, most prominently, Peter Fonda's The Hired Hand (1971). Later The Beard received two Obies in N.Y.C. He had hoped to study at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute), but when that didnt work out he enrolled at San Francisco State University, studying under the poet Robert Duncan and earning a bachelors degree. I am separate. The contemporary American poetic tradition known as ecopoetics arguably springs from their performances at the Six Gallery reading, where Snyder read A Berry Feast while McClure read For the Death of 100 Whales, which looks, in part, like this: The sleek wolvesMowers and reapers of sea kine.THE GIANT TADPOLES(Meat their algae)LeptLike sheep or children.Shot from the seas bore.(Goya!! They are attracted to each other, but their egos get in the way. Academy of American Poets, 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038. 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.. I. He holds his book in one hand while another is stretched heavenward, not unlike a preachers. There is an essence in fear overcome and I overcame fright in passing those zebras and this black Wildebeest. Actors were sometimes arrested, along with the occasional director or producer. McClure recalled, "The actor and the actress actually got two standing ovations, one at the end of the play and the second when the police hauled them out of the door and into the waiting wagon and took them off to book them. McClure was a popular, celebrated professor of English at the California College of Arts and Crafts (now renamed California College of the Arts), in Oakland, California, for many years. But over drinks, we started talking. In the mid-1990s, somewhat incongruously, Mercedes-Benz used it in a commercial. 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. But its a way of changing your mindset when you come to it.. On screen, McClure appeared in Martin Scorseses seminal 1978 concert film The Last Waltz perhaps the only rock documentary in which a poet reads lines by the Middle English author Geoffrey Chaucer. Before he began to write, he went to the printer that created boxing posters in San Francisco and had the poster of his vision printed up. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area hills with his wife the sculptor Amy Evans McClure. There is no way that you can read a poem by Michael McClure, author Juvenal Acosta has said, without experiencing some kind of connection with something primal and cosmic., Poetry is a muscular principal, said the man who incorporated lion roars into his lines. He has made two television documentaries The Maze and September Blackberries and is featured in several films including The Last Waltz (dir. 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. His awards, include a Guggenheim Felowship, the Obie Award for Best Play, the Alfred Jarry Award, and a Rockefeller grant for playwriting. 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. McClures songs include Mercedes Benz, popularized by Janis Joplin and new songs which have been performed by The Twenty-first Century Doors. The play has enjoyed particular success in London, having been produced there twice. WIRE magazine, from a review of the CD I Like your Eyes Liberty, The most fantastic poem in America 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. Clive Barnes of The New York Times, reviewing a 1967 production in Manhattan, did not find the play obscene but did find it tedious. But failing that, any edition will do, to experience Michaels poetry at its transcendent heights. He has a cameo in Peter Fondas Hired Hand. I thought it was a nature poem about mammal sexuality and mammal love. The mind drifts through in the shape of a museum, in the guise of a museum dreaming dead friends: Jim, Tom, Emmet, Bill. 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. Copyright 2021 by the Michael T. McClure Estate. 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, which was rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums. He has one daughter from his first marriage to Joanna McClure.). Like billboards their huge faces droop and stretch on the walls, on the walls of the cliffs out there, where trees with white trunks makes plumes on rock ridges. Down on the bone there were indentations like rivulets like the flowing patterns of little rivers. There is no hurry. Then I found that on the bridge we were among a herd of black WildebeestsBlack Gnus. Mr. McClures many poetry collections include Dark Brown (1961), Star (1970) and Rain Mirror (1999). 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. Five days later, the city of Berkeley brought its own charges of "lewd or dissolute conduct" against the play. Now aware of the play's controversial elements, the San Francisco Police Department secretly tape-recorded the first two performances and secretly filmed the third performance. Robert Creeley, What appeals to me most about Michaels poems is the fury and imagery of them McClure has worked extensively with his old friend Ray Manzarek, the Doors keyboardist, at festivals and colleges and clubs. And hes learned from musicians. I visitamong the peoples of myself and know allI need to know.I KNOW EVERYTHING! His play The Beard provoked numerous censorship battles, in Los Angeles, the cast was arrested after each performance for fourteen nights in a row. The works reveal McClure grounded in the requirements of the villanelle, but in "Premonition," he expresses his need to soar and fly. Michael McClure (October 20, 1932 - May 4, 2020) was an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist.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, which was rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums. A modern-day romantic in the mode of Shelley, McClure had to look the part, and he did. The equating of Spirit with Meat Walls is an attempt to reintegrate the abstraction of mind with the physical body; as he writes in Wolf Net (1968), first published in Scratching the Beat Surface (1982), Brain cells, nerve cellslike any cellsare meat. Throughout his work he insists on such formulations to combat the alienation inherent in the more traditional Western humanist model of the duality of mind and body. The Rolling Stone, One of our best and wisest bard/scholars. of a spider thread. Even in the semi-darkness the softness of their brown feathers made curls pliant as a young mother's hair. Soon we came to a cottage of white clapboards behind a big white clapboard house and knocked on the door; it was answered by a young man with long hair who was from the Incredible String Band. Even his notorious good looks, the novel suggests, were an invention of self-consciousness, a determined transformation from an out of shape, cross-eyed adolescent to the handsome, athletic artist who leaves Wichita to emerge as a key figure in San Franciscos burgeoning beat counterculture. Later The Beard received Obies in N.Y.C. GONEin the hole wheresoul swellsintonothingleaving solid spacewhere profilesof gods and fairiesare carvedandfinelypolishedby the clanking of trucks,thunder-shakingwaves,and the taste of mangos. 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. He lived in another world.. As Scalapino writes, though the vast majority of his poems over more than 60 years hew to the vertical centerline of the page, this arrangement is a sensitive instrument making different inventions in different poems. Sometimes the lines are all dead center, as in 100 Whales, but often enough they quiver around the meridian, deliberately imperfect and quite alive, in a way that centered fails to convey. 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. 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 . His journalism has been featured in The Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, the L.A. Times and San Francisco Chronicle. My mind is fingers holding a pen, he once wrote. Poetry doesn't pay. McClure, who died May 4 at 87 after suffering a stroke last year, was a countercultural figure who was present, Zelig-like, at key moments in San Franciscos Beat heyday and beyond. The Spirit and Body are simultaneous, one tense, the Meat Walls are Spirit. Ferlinghetti added that McClures death was such a surprise because I always thought of him as being so young. Ferlinghetti, the poet and co-founder of City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, turned 101 in March. But writing "O Lord, Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes . She mocks his masculinity, and he tells her she is envious of his beauty. Publishers Weekly noted of his work, McClure infuses ecstatic direct address and colloquial diction with an exquisite sensibility, one that reveals the world in its ordinary complex gorgeousness. He frequently performed his poetry with musical collaborators, including composer Terry Riley, and recorded several CDs with Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek. Selected poems by Michael McClure . Ginsberg, in his singular phrasing, praised McClures work as a blob of protoplasmic energy.. His most recent collections are Mysteriosos and other Poems (New Directions) and Of Indigo and Saffron: Selected and New Poems (University of California Press). He was 87. There was primal wildness in the upstanding coarse (not sleek as it really is in Africa) fur on the knobby, powerful-like-buffalo shoulders. Esteemed Beat poet Michael McClure has died of complications from a stroke he suffered last year. (Hed quit drinking decades ago.) My heart rose in my chest (as the metaphysical poets say "with purple wings of joy.") We are sorry. I hear the music of myself and write it down for no one to read. I fill space with myself. He has written more than 20 plays and musicals, several television documentaries, and the song Mercedes Benz, which was made famous by singer Janis Joplin. 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. "[citation needed]. Educated at the University of Wichita, the University of Arizona, and San Francisco State Collegewhere he studied with poet Robert Duncan. 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?. He had one daughter from his first marriage to Joanna McClure. McClure famously read selections of his Ghost Tantra poetry series to the caged lions in the San Francisco Zoo. The painis many pointed, without anguish.Light changes the room from yellows to violet!The dark brown space behind the door is preciousintimate, silent and still. This might go on forever. At age 22, Michael McClure gave his first poetry reading at the legendary Six Gallery event in San Francisco, where Allen Ginsberg first read Howl. 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. Mr. McClure in 1972. I blink in solemnity and unsolemn joy. McClure has also released CDs of his work with minimalist composer Terry Riley. The pain in my stomachis warm and tender. It has since played successfully all over the world and is a favorite with American university drama groups. His many books of poetry include Jaguar Skies, Dark Brown, Huge Dreams, Rebel Lions, Rain Mirror and Plum Stones. This battle diminishes as they realize that since they are alone together, they are free to shed their burdening facades and give in to what they are truly feeling. Diane di Prima, McClure is grounded in an informed Zen mode of perception, focused at ease within the moment. If we take the book at its wordand he speaks of it in his Authors Note as an attempt to show that [his] memory was still intactthe overwhelming impression it leaves is of self-consciousness as a major motivating force in his life. That night Mr. Ginsberg premiered an early version of Howl, the landmark poem (I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness) that became the defining work of the Beat generation. I would give him questions in advance and he would consider them and even write out responses. McClure has written twenty plays and musicals which are performed in the U.S. and abroad. His 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, for its obscenity-filled dialogue and a scene of simulated cunnilingus. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Michael McClure, one of the famed Beat poets of San Francisco whose career as a poet eclipsed many others in popular culture, has died. McClure is the author of the Afterword in Jerry Hopkins's and Danny Sugerman's seminal Doors biography, No One Here Gets Out Alive. A last CD, Piano Poems, recorded in San Francisco, was released in 2012. That night at the Six Gallery greatly inspired us to go ahead.. McClures songs include "Mercedes Benz," popularized by Janis Joplin, and new songs which were performed by Riders on the Storm, a band that consisted of original Doors members Ray Manzarek and Robbie Krieger. It debuted at the Actor's Workshop Theatre in San Francisco on the December 18, 1965. Hes an expert reader too, with an actors voice, sensual and attuned finely to cadence and energies of enunciation. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. He lets you know: read the vertical lines as standard modern American language. The CD explores spontaneous music and voice (working together) expressing the outrageous and mystical in both artists. On the other hand, the gestural conception of abstract expressionism identified by Harold Rosenberg as action painting mirrors the breath-as-unit conception of projective verse, and Lamantia in his selected prose Preserving Fire (2018) indeed calls McClure an action painter in words. Centering allows a freedom of line length unavailable to left-justification, as we see in 100 Whales when he follows the one-word line Incense with the six-word Gnashed at their tails and brothers. As a response to the question of open-field composition, centering satisfied an aesthetic need as well as a philosophical one for an artist in pursuit of the unity of existence, both in terms of consciousness and natural world. 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.
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