Antechamber and Other Poems (Paperback)

Michael McClure goes at the Godhead the way some men pound at a stuck door. Since the late Fifties, he's tried screaming curses, grunting meaninglessly in "beast language," writing "meat science essays" - and now he's giving Keatsian rhyme a shot in the cause of body-awareness and pan-everythingism. McClure may be our only genuine megaphone poet. "YES! THERE IS BUT ONE/ POLITIC AND THAT/ IS BIOLOGY." "I/ AM/ A MAMMAL/ PATRIOT." Still, with all his talk about the "holistic" and the "flow of the biomass" and "the shattered substrate incorporating chop and moil," McClure is, as he ages, getting a little calmer; when his eyes aren't goggling at the biomass at a hundred rpm's, he can even write a fine, alert poem like "By the Highway." But he's no less brave than ever. Few contemporary poets so consistently skirt the hilarious. Or so often fall into it: "We're otters swimming in the shadows of the now." McClure is the kind of poet it would be great fun to read if you knew no English - all those capital letters and the ants-in-the-pants energy! For English speakers, though, subject to understanding, this Whole Me Catalogue is so much rapturous farina. (Kirkus Reviews)

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.

General

Imprint:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	February 1982
First published:	1978
Authors:	Michael McClure
Dimensions:	203 x 132 x 8mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	98
ISBN-13:	978-0-8112-0682-2
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > From 1900 Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Poetry & poets > General Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Poetry texts & anthologies > General Promotions
LSN:	0-8112-0682-3
Barcode:	9780811206822

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