A landmark work of bio-romanticism, Mephistos and Other Poems is
the first completely new collection in five years from legendary
Beat and SF Renaissance poet Michael McClure, reflecting his
interests in mammal consciousness and ecological survival. The
title sequence stems from McClure's ongoing "grafting" experiment,
growing new poems from fragments of previously ones. "Some Fringes"
is a series of haiku-like nature poems, while the seventeen-part
"Rose Breaths" derives from the poet's practice of meditation. The
freestanding poems grouped under the title "Being" pay homage to
many of McClure's collaborators and fellow travelers like Bruce
Conner, Terry Riley, and Dave Haselwood. The book climaxes with
"Song Heavy," recounting McClure's recent encounter with a beached
whale in Rockport, Massachusetts, and recalling his classic "For
the Death of 100 Whales," which he read at the Six Gallery in
1955--the inaugural moment of American eco-poetics. Michael McClure
is an award-winning American poet, playwright, songwriter, and
novelist. After moving from Kansas to San Francisco as a young man,
he was one of the five poets who participated in the Six Gallery
reading that featured the public debut of Allen Ginsberg's landmark
poem "Howl." A key figure of the Beat Generation, McClure is
immortalized as Pat McLear in Jack Kerouac's novels The Dharma Bums
and Big Sur. He also participated in the sixties counterculture
alongside musicians like Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. McClure
remains active as a poet, essayist, and playwright and lives with
his second wife, Amy, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Michael and I
have been twisting the Dharma for twenty years now. He reads his
poetry like a mad lion or a hummingbird or a soft evening tidal
pool or a wild California thunderstorm...His words are of a new
realm of love and joy and terror. What a pleasure to play with such
a perceptive artist. It's always been my great joy to make music to
his words."--Ray Manzarek [C]ertainly a genius in thought and
writing it out ...McClure is one of the few contemporaries to have
understood Kerouac as a literary poet--and learned some joyous
classic invention therefrom ...Thus we have a McClure poet, a
McClure natural philosopher, and a McClure prosateur and novelist.
Hardly anyone in America with equal range and sharpness, liveness.
What more?"--Allen Ginsberg Praise for Mephistos: In Mephistos we
are again thrown into Michael McClure's lavish lair of forceful
magic. Its actions are literal ones, handfuls of jewels
disintegrate as a firewall rises to a solid prism. There is no poet
more adept at calling forth the elements, only to fashion them
later as eternal amulets for his readers. 'NEW MOON ((BLACK!))
/STAR CLOUDS/ HALOES/ Flashlight reflects/ into two small eyes.'
You will find your body changed through the labyrinth these poems
initiate."--Cedar Sigo "Close attention will be rewarded in kind.
Keep Mephisto near at hand, read only a poem or two at a time, let
the imagery possess you. It's okay, you can trust it. It's McClure:
he'll never steer you wrong."--Robert Hunter, lyricist, poet,
songwriter "He is such a sweet paradox! Like most of Shelley and
the late poems of D.H. Lawrence, McClure turns the phenomenal world
inside out, seeking Mind within mind."--Diane di Prima, poet "If
you've enjoyed McClure's writings in the past, this volume ought to
recapture your poetic heart and rekindle your imagination." --Jonah
Raskin, New York Journal of Books "Mephistos is perhaps an open
love letter to all of McClure's many fans who have followed him
ever since he arrived in San Francisco from Kansas City more than
half a century ago."--San Francisco Chronicle
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