Previews of On the Road; 4 Of 12; Michael McClure

This is Allen Ginsberg giving you a preview of On the road and some of the poets who will be coming to visit Boulder this summer to take part in the caraway conference. And one major figure in the caraway literary Constellation as well as a figure in his books is Mike McClure the poet born in Marysville I think grew up reading Wichita with a group of other poets and publishers like Bruce Conner the painter and David Hazelwood who was a publisher of our home press in San Francisco. McClure was studying with. Robert Duncan was a handsome young kid really like Irish black haired Irish kid with a beautiful angelic face and at the same time very very scholarly and sametime quite a man. So his primary interest was in biology science. Man as a mammal the universe as a large mammal so to

speak the plasm of the universe. And he took part with Gary Snyder so that within myself Kerouac peter off key. Oh when I think I mentioned Philip lemon tea you can it's Rexroth many others at the famous inaugural reading of new poetry at the Six Gallery in San Francisco and 55 that is a clue that we get to fifty six you know Carol reckon Peter were there. And Neal Cassady listening and going out getting the wine for us was the introducer and the first poet was Michael McClure who prophetically read a poem called on the death of 100 whales. His interest was in ecology. He read a little piece in Time about the mess a lot of members of the whale kingdom and he realized that it was a mass murder of a genocide of whales as it is more understood now. So he read a poem which is later printed as a little pamphlet on the death of 100 whales. It was a later sort of a handsome poet he was a friend of

Jim Morrison and Jim Morrison sort of poetry guru like he wants me to visit Morris and I think. Somewhere or early 60s Morrison was rehearsing in late 60s for a singer right in the middle of a course in Barney's Beanery and rehearsal studio in Los Angeles. He also spent quite a bit of time with Dylan one of the early band tours and rather huge cover story for Rolling Stone and Dylan as a poet. And actually was close with Kerouac and he was one of the major poets who was influenced immediately by Carroll X. lyricism but might be interesting to see Kerouac's description of McClure from Carrick's book Big sitter we have in chapter 24 you know in this situation 116 in the book is written 61 or so about 160 characters returned I think to do so in a television program he wants a hideout and then he goes out and gets drunk in San Francisco with everybody

and he flees to Ferlinghetti cabin in Big Sur in New Castle you drive down with the with Phil and the MC clear or clear shows up. So his is name Michael McClure is a. It was a prototype for a character in big circle the Claire Petrich nuclear problem. McClure exhibits another strange facet of his hands and became faintly decayed Rambo type personality at her summer camp but coming out into the living room with a goddamn fork on her shoulder. It's his pet Hawk of all things. The hook is black as night insisted on her shoulder picking nastily at it. Cluck of a hamburger he holds up to it in fact the sight of that is so rarely poetic McCleary his poetry is really like a Blackhawk he's always writing about darkness. Dark brown dark bedrooms moving curtains chemical fire dark billows love in chemical fire we read darkness writes All that and beautiful long lines that go across the page irregularly ineptly somehow. And some hot McCleary think I suddenly yell out.

Now I know your real name is Lehrer M.A. PAT HYLAND more were on or whether the walkabout to go mad in tears white hair in a tempest was I'm such a silly thing. Feeling good again now that we've got new wine. Time to go back to the cabin and fly down that dark highway and so forth so as a very funny little caricature picture one of his early poems was a thing called PND poems home. Than in the old ON ELLEN intelligence the new American poaching 1945 1960 where you can get a taste of his energy in plasm. He was an early experimenter with psychedelics. Gary Snyder and everybody else in the San Francisco community. Pale people in part one. I just read a few fragments of his poetry as it develops. Clear the senses bright sitting in a black chair rocker the white walls reflecting the color of clouds moving over the sun intimacies the room's not important but like divisions of wall space a whole

hideousness in beauty. I hear the music of myself and write it down for no one to read. I pass fantasies as they seemed to me was the voices I visit among the peoples of myself and know all I need to know I know everything. I passed into the room. There's a golden bed radiating wall light the air is full of silver hangings in sheaves. I smile to myself. I know all there is to know. I see all there is to feel. I am friendly with the ache in my belly. There is no time to force spaciousness still make closing my eyes there were flashes of light so forth. So those are the notes he took when he was only made into the poem. When he got interested in pure sound. Partly because of that the only poem. In going beyond purely linear talk. So he wrote a book which is published by city lights called Ghost Tantras which are experiments in pure sound mixed with words. He was interested in animals and

coyotes and lions. He once went to the San Francisco Zoo and read these poems and recorded it to the lions in the Lion House. And after a while they began responding. So there's fun of this roar of MacLure roaring at the lions with his sound Combs and the lions roaring back appreciatively. Ghost Hunters for doorways or bare gardens of cool shadows entranceways our gardens of futurity got our roof on our guy rule or are we memorize the remembrances of our sexuality. Holding hands with our heads in the opposite directions. All of our gear has returned. We are useful again in liberated liberated in the morning are still cool doorways and entrances to the colorful real true myth of the night. Cool. Horror or murmurous Grauer our Boma Groene crüe Sweeting

sleeping. So those are what we're called that was a ghost hunter. I'll give you another May 17 and they were very much influenced by co-ax Mexico City Blues a little short little test the patients. In air in the air blew a pink streak i hear me. You do or were or do with my new Where. Who know garage are right grandma her are our our dream refuge of their hair. Your own home room or Billy's new car. See light in dim breastfed her I growl. Shake them off. Resume new arguable they team your job. We shot our star blue bubble rock. Good xul not my dear to

weep bless my love. Solid week. Or central California at night beginning so that the experiments appear sound poetry mature like actually very similar to the Russian futures put clip in the Coffs experiments with poetry based somewhat on the same sense of a personal biology. Later on there are a number of political poems that are very very beautiful. And very much within the area of description and the caraway the Maclaren the poet writing poems about curtains and silhouettes and dark bedrooms dark brown dark brown was an enormously beautiful erotic book put out in San Francisco in the early 60s called dark room which was a sort of a heterosexual breakthrough. Erotic porn poetry in the porn because it's too beautiful to be poor and so the main character mentioned dark brown chemical fire dark blue. He has a home of

McClure's that was published who have written a cover record sixty eight in the 60s and published by sand dollar in Berkeley. I am the silhouette the moves in black. A profile making the attack on space and growing to be the meat that moves within. But I am out with a veil within the veil where souls are made. My brain is struck again by that window on the world that leads into the stars and their billions worlds that sink into the mater's heart and I am light. I am a cave. I act within. I am the censor where the smoke of perfume makes my dreams. I am the melody that screams for silence on the boom that guides the brow and the tracery of wind that blows the sail and also creatures sleeping on the veldt. I see all things are men the torture that burn the babes was in among us the torturers that burned the babes are neither black nor white but men. They were put on their rainbow robes again. The horrors

in the night are real. I am a rose. All space will twist itself to shapes of me and I am free. Imagination gives me what I am a woman's picture burns itself within my head. I raise my skirts a velvet silk or lace or lead. There are no hurt except the pains made real. They act in Tilly on the clouds of stars to create themselves among the bodies of their slain naked injure dragons in their planes and concrete rooms with movies on the walls forgetting their memo men. In later book McClure wrote in. Every morning he get up in about five or six. He was teaching where their arts college and he's been a professor there for 15 20 years I guess now. You know your beginnings like everybody else and then he got a job. My wife's married daughter I think is what I do when it was a write poetry. His daughter is now studying to be an M.D.

was a kind of micros or junior so some extremely biologically sophisticated family extension. So McClure was extremely influenced by cowards in the sense of a liberation as a lyricism and as a delicacy in the liberation of writing from commerce that it would write books to be published he wrote books for the fun of writing little things. That ever he was writing have it when he wrote this interesting book published by New Directions called September Blackberry's. Published in 74. Who have a graph. Now I am an Arden The more fool I get up in the morning. We had to go take care of his house and his teaching and eat right for an hour or two hours and write anything you don't like. So we had these big sheets of paper to write little funny lyrics poems on them. So I'm reading from. September BlackBerry's tiny poems or longer ones are

influenced by Kerouac's Mexico City Blues freestyle. Words. Else words are great words too tiny to be heard. Like for a silver turbo jets within a galaxy elf words are gentle sweet and lion roars of plain truth from a space we barely comprehend to perish. Wicked vicious is a funny thing you notice in the same sort of vision of what put that in Portrait of a hipster. This is kind of interesting little note by McClure in the late 60s dropping. The Ids are strange looking out into nowhere behind him. The flag stretches like a sailing ship. The green stripes smile like a disuse. This is a brutal murder reality the body as a shield for what is happening smell of marijuana in the nose scratch of silver on the tooth waiting to find some bloody meaning grinning and grinning imaginary guns that hit gray haired quick draw artist. Be quick.

We have they are like a little notational style of poetry just sort of stray ideas going through his head. And then there's one called Beyond Thought which I think is probably very typical of his sort of lyrical noticing of tiny animals to see if he's seeing himself an animal or a mammal therefore his pictures of mammals and snakes and other living creatures are empathetic who e x ray. Clear beyond thought. The gopher snake in the crevice is a God. He raises his head and peers. He is hungry and mindless. He's not afraid only cautious. His mother the smooth and rounded the spot and gleams hide him in darkness where light breaks against rocks. There's no reason why a god must be intelligent. A god or a spirit is free of proportion forgetful and experimental does not remember that I am here and slithers to move into the bright desert sun by the lake side in search of the mouse. Another

Spirit God who dreamed in a burrow cuddled drawn tight to his side whiskers sleek against his cheeks waiting for a move like sleep listening occasionally trembling. Sort of like D.H. Lawrence that kind of perception of animals. So this is Alan Ginsburg signing off for another program preview of ON THE ROAD. We were discussing Michael McClure who'll be one of the participants in the caraway conference July 23rd August 1st sponsored by new robot. Twenty five years after the publication of Kerouac's On the road and be back next week with another poet works and texts and fun. You know the lady too.