Profile of Michael McClure on Famous Like Me

Michael McClure (October 20, 1932) is an American poet, essayist, and playwright.

Life

McClure was born on October 20, 1932 in Marysville, Kansas and grew up in Seattle, where he was fascinated by nature and wildlife and expected to grow up to be a natural scientist. He went to San Francisco as a young man, participated in a poetry workshop with poet Robert Duncan, and got drawn into the emerging Beat vortex of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance. He was one of the five poets who read at the famous Six Gallery reading in 1955. Like Gary Snyder he writes poetry infused with the awareness of nature, but McClure's special interest is in the animal consciousness that too often lies dormant in mankind. There is no cuteness in McClure's animal kingdom, populated with Buddhist panda bears, Beat tomcats and doomed whales. McClure hung around Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love, playing poetic melodies on his autoharp and participating with Ginsberg and Snyder at the January 1967 Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park.

Career

One of five poets who read at the famous Six Gallery reading in 1955 (along with Allen Ginsberg), McClure's works, along with those of Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti are often associated with both the Beat Generation and the later San Francisco poetry movement. An odd footnote to his long poetic career is his co-authorship (with Bobby Neuwerth) of the playground-rhyme-like popular song, Mercedes-Benz for Janis Joplin. McClure collaborative performances with Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek fuse spoken word poetry and improvised jazz piano.

Bibliography

• Passage (1956)
• For Artaud (1959)
• Hymns to St. Geryon and Other Poems (1959)
• The New Book/A Book of Torture (1961)
• Dark Brown (1961)
• Meat Science Essays (1963)
• The Blossom; or Billy the Kid (1964)
• The Beard (1965)
• Poisoned Wheat (1965)
• Unto Caesar (1965)
• Love Lion Book (1966)
• The Sermons of Jean Harlow and the Curses of Billy the Kid (1968)
• Hail Thee Who Play (1968)
• Muscled Apple Swift (1968)
• Little Odes and The Raptors (1969)
• Star (1970)
• The Mad Cub (1970)
• The Adept (1971)
• The Mammals - includes The Feast, The Blossom; or, Billy the Kid, and Pillow (1972)
• The Book of Joanna (1973)
• Solstice Blossom (1973)
• Rare Angel (1974)
• A Fist-Full (1956-57) (1974)

External Links

• Michael McClure & Ray Manzarek Official Website
• Michael McClure biography
• Michael McClure bibliography
• Michael McClure Literary Homepage
• bookseller specializing in Michael McClure books
• photographs of Michael McClure by Larry Keenan
• Essay on McClure’s Love Lion

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Michael McClure