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. McClure's plays and musicals are performed in the U.S. and abroad. I am separate. Allen Ginsberg, A flashpoint at the intersection of the spiritual and the real. I interviewed him twice, once for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, once for the Poetry Foundation, and both times his approach was the same. The implications of this philosophical and spiritual monism for his poetry are vast. Michael McClure (born October 20, 1932) is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. I asked Snyder whether Michael benefitted from his close relationship with a typesetter like Dave Haselwood, his childhood friend from Wichita. Join our community book club. He had one daughter from his first marriage to Joanna McClure. The pain in my stomach is warm and tender. 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. Beat poet, playwright, novelist, and documentary filmmaker Michael McClure was born in Marysville, Kansas, and raised there and in Seattle. Mr. McClure, whose circle of friends and acquaintances included Beat figures and many others in the San Francisco counterculture, makes a brief appearance in The Last Waltz, Martin Scorseses 1978 documentary about the final concert of the Band. The Mystery of the Hunt 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 . We work hard to protect your security and privacy. SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE PHOTO BY PENNI GLADSTONE PENNI GLADSTONE. He has a cameo in Peter Fondas Hired Hand. I say Love is not a dream or mind-invention. 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. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area hills with his wife the sculptor Amy Evans McClure. The pain in my stomachis warm and tender. At the end of that third performance on August 8, 1966only the fifth time the play had been performed in publicthe San Francisco Police Department raided the venue and arrested actors Billie Dixon (Jean) and Richard Bright (Billy). I stared at them wondering how they could all be one piece. Garrett Caples is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Power Ballads (Wave, 2016). 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. This might go on forever. Love is body beating upon body, the confrontation of face and face or shoulder and shoulder. His work as a novelist includes the autobiographical The Mad Cub and The Adept. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that. He lives in Oakland 's Bay Area hills with his wife the sculptor Amy Evans McClure. 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. 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. 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 fillspace with myself. He has given readings in venues as varied as the Fillmore Ballroom, Yale, Stanford and The National Biodiversity Conference. His poetry is heavily infused with an awareness of nature, especially in the animal consciousness that often lies dormant in mankind. Having failed in their attempts to censor Allen Ginsberg's Howl, the performances of Lenny Bruce and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the police department was intent to succeed this time. McClure also contributed the afterword to No One Here Gets Out Alive, Jerry Hopkins's and Danny Sugerman's seminal Doors biography. He soon became a key member of the Beat Generation and is immortalized as "Pat McLear" in Kerouac's Big Sur. I didnt know Michael very well, Ferlinghetti said. His most recent collections are Mysteriosos and other Poems (New Directions) and A trove of rare photographs of the Beats finds a new home. The death of Michael McClure, on May 4, 2020, caught me off-guard. Or else, knowing him was simply unlike knowing other poets Id known. The role model for Jim Morrison, the L.A.Times characterized McClure, and has found sources in music from Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis to the composer Terry Riley. With his steely eyes and long, flowing hair, the poet Michael McClure somewhat resembled a lion, a creature with which he felt an affinity. 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. I PASS INTO THE ROOMthere is a golden bed radiating all lightthe air is full of silver hangings and sheathesI smile to myself. 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. 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). Francis Crick, discoverer of the DNA double helix, This poetry is soulful freedom at play in the Desire-realm 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. On Oct. 7, 1955, McClure gave his first-ever poetry reading at the now-defunct Six Gallery in San Francisco. 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. 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. I pass fantasies as they sing to me with Circe-Voices. I passed by him both afraid and unafraid of wildness as I had passed through the herd of zebras at the top of Ngorongoro Crater in front of the lodge, where from the cliff we could see a herd of elephants like ants, and the soda lake looked pink because of flamingos there. 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. They are attracted to each other, but their egos get in the way. There were acting roles too: McClure played a Hells Angel in Norman Mailers Beyond the Law (1968) and had a cameo in Peter Fondas The Hired Hand (1971). Later The Beard received two Obies in N.Y.C. 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. He was also friends with Jim Morrison, that bands lead singer, although when they first met they did not instantly bond. It could have been a tantric ritual. 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. Simple Eyes and Other Poems Michael McClure. We both looked, holding hands, and I felt your wide-eyed drinking-in of things. 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. We are sorry. A powerful collection of new work written during the last years of McClure's life, Mule Kick Blues was readied for publication before the poet's death in May 2020. I am separate from gloom and beauty. Under Penal Code Section 647(a) the pair were initially charged with "obscenity", then "conspiracy to commit a felony" and ultimately with "lewd or dissolute conduct in a public place". 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. He writes poetry with acute eyes and ears, translating critical observation into precisely tempered verbal notations, celebrating the animal body and human consciousness growing out from it. 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. He 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. . Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. 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. 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. WalkingI step higher in carefulness. Poems are the property of their respective owners. The lions roar back, though its unclear if McClures captive audience is more agitated than moved by the work. The torrent of their unleashed passions leads to a final scene of great controversy, as the play comes to a climax with an act of explicit sexual intimacy between the cowboy and the starlet. At the age of 22 Michael McClure gave his first poetry reading at the legendary Six Gallery event in San Francisco, where Allen Ginsberg first read Howl.
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