Three Poems

by Michael McClure, Robert Hunter (Introduction)

Genres: Poetry

256 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1995

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

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I HAVE CUT THROUGH THE HUMANE SURFACE
and I know all men and women
(and they
know me
for I
am them).
WE POUR FORTH OUR WANTS
in the center of this tornado.
Nothing can tear down
what we are
we only color it with intellective lies.

I
WAS
RIGHT:
WE
ARE
LOVES AND HUNGERS!!!
Delicate at moments, murderous and murmurous at others. Our
CRIES

are songs and howls
that we make into the sizzling air.

KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT IS TRULY HAPPENING
(beyond our sense of fingertouch or ear)
we must read the walls
while they stand there
amidst the great unrolling,
and study the positioning
of garnets
on the boulder.

THE RETOPOLOGIZING IS RIGHT NOW! WE ARE WAVES
and Princes
in
the
surge!

LIKE ALL MEN AT ALL TIMES, WE ARE ELF
AND FAIRY FOLK!

from Rare Angel

(this excerpt should be centered down the page (“like a spine”) but that’s impossible here.


I have a long and ambivalent history with Michael McClure’s poetry. Since the Beats were some of the first “contemporary” poets that excited me, I naturally had an ingrained affinity with McClure’s sensibility and personal mystique, but the way that sensibility and mystique manifested in his poetry actually made me cringe at times. Whether it was his posing as a roaring lion, or the page-centered layout of his poems, or his EXCESSIVE USE of caps and exclamation points, or his naked (though mannered) emotional outbursts, or his meat man distance from the artsy experimental poetry I tend to prefer, I do not know; but when I read about his poetry I dug it, the visionary nature of his outlook resonating with me in extra-poetical ways, but when I actually read it I often tossed the book aside and ruefully giggled, because, you see, I wanted to like it but I simply couldn’t.

Which is why this particular volume ended up relegated to my basement bookshelves, completely forgotten, until I received an order (via Amazon Marketplace) for another basement-relegated poetry book and went down the stairs to retrieve it and in my searching came upon McClure’s 3 Poems behind beards of laundry lint and household project detritus and said to myself, “I think I’ll give McClure another shot.” I then read it right through (though not all of Dark Brown which I still can’t completely abide) on a morning when I was, I admit, kind of sleepless and still kind of buzzed from hanging with a friend the night before - it’s often in these “compromised” states of mind when new thoughts and new apprehensions make their way into my mind more easily – and sure enough McClure’s words leapt from the page glowing with significance.

(For the record - I have read most of the book twice since last Sunday, completely sober, and both times the words leapt and glowed.)

This time around I was able to see his nakedness free of his image and posturing and was able to read him as the naked mammal visionary he is. But even more importantly I was able to integrate his visionary quality with the poetry on the page and saw the necessity and usefulness of his fixing his vision into words. I was able to read it as art and as wisdom literature.

So as the title states this collection contains three (long) poems, covering a thirty-four year span. Dark Brown, 1961; Rare Angel, 1975; and Dolphin Skull, 1995.

Dark Brown is a strident (to say the least) bit of Beat rebellion complete with Fuck Ode. While the youthful energy still embedded in it fires me up at times, it feels at this late date a bit musty, and musty youth is not something I care to mingle with too often.

Rare Angel is a remarkable work of sustained and cumulative visionary power. As with many of McClure’s poems it is as much a work to be performed as silently read. The “idea” (or concept, or stance) illuminating it is a representation of the Self as a nearly transcendent, though still Earth-rooted, site (of monstrous proportions) of extreme mutability and cosmic apprehension existing beyond time but with all of biological history coursing through it; or as McClure himself puts it “comprised, as our cells are, of memories of Pleistocene mammoth hunts and of molecules from toy plastic umbrellas”. This is a poem that must be read with an open mind free of cynicism, and by “open” I don’t just mean free of prejudice, I mean it also in the sense of having the ability to see beyond representation (as in the words on the page) and into the vast cosmic-historical openness beyond the page. In this way I regard it as wisdom literature – a particular mind/soul orientation is required to get all that’s said. It is also a poem that I hope I am capable of reading for years to come, as that would indicate my mind will remain open and free of snarky cynicism.

Dolphin Skull is as impressive in its own way as Rare Angel, but feels a bit more literary, with nearly every new page beginning with a variation of the last line on the previous page, and is just not as intense, which is understandable given that McClure was twenty years older when he wrote it. But still it bristles with penetrating Zen insights of daily world awareness, and even manages to present a fairly intoxicating vision of the Big Bang (which continues to this day in McClure’s cosmology).

[Mitch · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've always loved McClure, even though I know that I could never love him as much as he loves himself. Even so, I like the way he roars & whispers poems, I like the hippie language he practically invented, and I really like it when he stretches out in long poems, like these. Rare Angel is a total masterpiece, lucid and hallucinatory, with a lovely cadence and many strong political and spiritual aspects. Probably my favorite of the three poems in this book. I heard him read from it once, at the MOMA series, the same one where Duncan cursed a camera guy for buzzing around and in front of him like a bee. McClure read this poem softly, stately and with great aplomb. Very luminous poem, and sometimes a bit flarfy.

[chacierrr · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO FUCKING GOOD…WHAT HAPPENED TO POETRY??

- This is where poetry was supposed to go in the modern world, after the beats, true pinnacle work of spontaneous and associative THOUGHT—a perfect kind of sincerity and associative wisdom of CHOICE.

I love this so much. It flows so damn well.

My friends in lightness and darkness should read this.

[Mat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Want to give this book three and a half stars actually - three is slightly too harsh but four is slightly too kind.

This book features three classic McClure long poems in reverse chronological order (which reminded me of a book compiled in a similar manner by Louis Zukofsky). The most recently penned of these poems, Dolphin Skull, shows an interesting literary synthesis of hallucination, vision and childhood memories all swept together in the chaos of the moment recalled by McClure (remember these poems were written spontaneously) and Rare Angel is similar in style to Dolphin Skull (but differs thematically) but much stronger and more vivid in its imagery. Also, Dolphin Skull takes the last line of the previous section to begin the next section. I'm not sure if there is any particular reason for doing this (just like McClure's baffling mirror poems in On Organism). To my mind, Rare Angel is definitely the strongest work here but the Fuck Ode part of Dark Brown is very explicit and McClure skilfully captures the physical moments of a sexual encounter with a lover in a meadow. This is the poem that Kerouac once famously called "the most fantastic poem in America". I put that last comment down as typical Kerouackian hyperbole, which Kerouac was prone to do whenever he discovered something that excited him (like Neal Cassady's Joan Anderson letter) but it is undoubtedly powerful. It did even make me a little horny.

I used to really love McClure but at times he is a little bit too hippy (if that makes sense) to my liking. He is definitely a talented poet but I sometimes wonder what he puts in his pipe along with his tobacco. In summary I would say that Rare Angel is definitely worth reading and I did enjoy sections of Dolphin Skull. And Dark Brown is important to read, from a historical perspective, just to notice the growth curve of McClure's career and how much his poetry has progressed since the 50s and 60s. Personally speaking, I preferred his slightly more recent collection called Plum Stones and look forward to reading Mysteriosos (his most recent work) next. McClure is one of those rare poets who gets better with age. He is a good example of how far you can go in life on pure bravado and pure self-confidence (perhaps 'vanity' would be more accurate).

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems are amazing. I cannot say that I feel I completely understood each one of them, but they certainly make for interesting, exciting reading. These are somewhat demanding poems, in that they ask for the reader's deep attention; this is a good thing, because by responding with deep attention, one more fully appreciates the intensity, wonder, and beauty to be found. "Dolphin Skull" fairly glows on the page. The fact that the poems are spontaneous compositions is to be marveled at. These require careful, attentive reading but are well worth the effort.

[Oriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this in a box in storage and started reading it again.. I still seem to love McClure's style, his imagery, the juxtaposition...Personal tastes are strange and can last decades sometimes. Hmmm.

Recommended for anyone interested in Beat poetry, biology, the natural world, the strange equilibrium betwixt (yeah, I wrote it) savagery and civilization, and possibly anyone who likes Rimbaud, Baudelaire, and the like...

[Scott Ballard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Raindrops hanging on plum leaf buds.
Sunlight and moon light on the craggy
Redwood bark
And the smell of the car
Inside the car,
Dusty felt and ersatz velvet,
As it drives through the cliffs
Of the desert.

[Drew Gebhardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

yeah pretty sick.

[Jared Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO NOW IT'S SERIOUS

YOU SAY

You say it is serious.

You say it pours into itself
like honey poured from cup to cup.

THINGS ARE WHAT THEY ARE:
WAVES OF STARS OR DOTS.

[Gregory Rodriguez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spontaneous poems at it's finest!

[Mills College Library]

811.54 M1286t 1995