McClure Kick Blues [by Vincent Katz]

Tomorrow, at the California Shakespeare Theater, in Orinda, California, there will be a memorial to poet, playwright and thinker Michael McClure, who passed away in May of 2020. Along with Diane di Prima, of all the great poets we have lost in the past few years, Michael for me defines an era. It’s funny to think of it now, but it’s McClure and di Prima who somehow stand for a whole experiment in poetry and living that remains vital to me, and I imagine always will. I think it is partially the integration of their poetry with a way of thinking about living that is the key to their vitality.

In his introduction to the first edition of Ghost Tantras, published by City Lights in 1964, McClure wrote:

I WAS HERE AND I LIKED IT!

It was all O.K.

I suffered.

There were scents, and flowers, and textures, beautiful women.

I was a handsome man. I invented love.

I radiated genius for those who saw me with loving eyes.

I was happy — I laughed and cried. Constantly new

sights and sounds. I trembled and sweated

at the sight of beauty. I laughed at strong

things because I loved them — wanting to kick them in

and make freedom. When I go I’M GONE.

Don’t resurrect me

or the duplicates of my atoms.

It was perfect !

I am sheer spirit.

Tomorrow, poets, musicians, publishers, friends will celebrate this poet who some link to Shelley and Lawrence, and who I see as a human being able to intuit his living on earth in relation to all other living beings, and simultaneously to flesh that out in relation to the beauty, and sometimes terror, he sensed in the arts of painting, music, dance, theater. He wanted to reach most of all, to reach out, to resist, to feel the softness of the couch beneath his lover and himself, the dissolving of inside and out, the hummingbird, the bombs falling on Cambodia, consciousness creating and destroying itself each instant.

                     

As a kind of parting gift, Michael left us Mule Kick Blues and Last Poems, published this year by City Lights. Editor Garrett Caples’ account of how the book was put together makes clear both McClure’s fastidiousness when it came to form and his openness to such questions as sequencing and grouping poems. A sequence of four “Death Poems” in a section called “MORTALITIES” evinces one of the most joyful attitudes toward death I’ve seen in poetry, something perhaps not surprising to readers of McClure, but still a fantastic thing to have:

                                                            TO GROW OLD IS A JOY PRECEDING THE BIG ONE.

                                                                            Death is a dark chocolate cake,

                                                                      sweet, and filled with deep blue tortures.

Remember Michael tomorrow, remember joy, remember poetry.

Comments

[Alan Soldofsky]

Michael was very kind to me and generous during his lifetime. He gave me the opportunity to be his substitute teacher at California College of the Arts, where he had long been teaching on their Oakland campus. It must have been the Spring of 1974, if I can remember back that far. Michael told me when I wandered onto the CCA campus that he he read my poems published in a few local journals and liked them. And wondered if I'd teach his poetry writing and theater appreciaiton classes while he spent a month in New York City rehearsing and opening a new play. Through Michael I met a great many people in the Bay Area poetry, theater, and music scenes. And we remanied friends through his lifetime (though we did not see each other much toward the end of his life). Thank you Michael for the beauty you brought into my life, and for enlarging the world that we shared while you walked the earth. Long may you roar!

[Vincent Katz]

Thank you Alan for this very meaningful and heartfelt comment. What you write illuminates something that may not be as well known about Michael as his literary achievements — his generosity and capacity for friendship.

[Kenneth Braxton]

Makes me wonder whether you ever met Frank O'Hara and some of the others you speak about.

[lally]

wonderful tribute vincent, and I totally agree about McClure and di Prima

[Maria]

I love the last word in this final poem: torture. I speaks of flesh like a Canadian meat pie or tortiere.

[Vincent Katz]

Thanks Michael! I've been thinking about you while writing these. Then today I thought, "Michael and Michael."

[Vincent Katz]

Thank you for your comment Maria! "Torture" is a word McClure keeps coming back to, and it always has multiple connotations, such as those you suggest.

[Vincent Katz]

Kenneth, I did indeed know Frank O'Hara when I was a child. I know some poets and others not so much. I heard Baraka read a number of times but didn't know him personally.

[David Lehman]

Thank you, Vincent, for an excellent and most stimulating series of posts.

[Vincent Katz]

Thank you for the opportunity, David!