Antechamber, & Other Poems

by Michael McClure

Antechamber and Other Poems , Michael McClure's latest book with New Directions, joins a growing list of contributions that includes the verse collection September Blackberries (1974) and Jaguar Skies (1975) as well as the musical play Gorf (1976). His writing in recent years is "alchemical" in its intent, yet his twin declarations, "Biology Is Politics" and "I Am A Mammal Patriot," perhaps express more accurately both the universality of his outlook and its humane particularity. McClure's mysticism is vigorously scientific. Even the familiar patterned shapes of his poems remind us of the stars in the night sky and those we see when we shut our eyes. In the dancing lines of his newest work--the title poem "Antechamber" most especially--are the whirl of galaxies, the radiance of molecules, the energy lines of the double helix coiling around its core.

Genres: Poetry

98 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1978

About the author

Michael McClure (born October 20, 1932 in Marysville, Kansas) is 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 rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums. He soon became a key member of the Beat Generation and is immortalized as "Pat McLear" in Kerouac's Big Sur.

Reviews

[Meeni Levi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the poem « Antechamber » absolutely stunning. While some of the other pieces struck me as a bit weak, the collection overall is very good.

[Sophie Heinrichs · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We are moving sizeless rooms that push away the dark and all the gnats at sundown in the rosy lovely light
are cousin angels catching light upon their wings
in the antechamber of the night."

..."join me here, in this space that we invent from real stuff where we have never laughed, nor danced, nor sung before."

4.5

[Mat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisite Blakean verse by this modern bard.
In the 1980s when Ginsberg gave a lecture on Mexico City Blues at Naropa and how it influenced many poets, Ginsberg said that McClure was so turned on that he went on to write a book of beautiful birds and bees and rosy lips which he said was called September Blackberries. Although September Blackberries is a great book in its own right/write, I cannot help thinking that Ginsberg may have really been referring to Antechamber & Other Poems which fits more closely with his earlier description.
An impossibly beautiful vision of the surge of life written by one of 'Kerouac's children' - Michael McClure.
As Kerouac accurately, eerily prophesied, "After me, the deluge". Indeed.

[Mills College Library]

811.54 M1286a 1978