Michael McClure

June 17, 2010

McClure’s Mysteriosos

Filed under: Sponsors — Tags: Joel Weishaus, Michael McClure, Mysteriosos — Paul Nelson @ 11:44 am

A very intelligent review of Michael McClure’s new book Mysteriosos has been written by Joel Weishaus. He spots the prophetic in McClure’s latest work:

Before April 20, 2010, when news spread of the disastrous sinking of BP’s oil-drilling platform, Deepwater Horizon, in the Gulf of Mexico, with each day for months millions of barrels of oil—life-blood of contemporary economies that is poisoning the planet—polluting the already ecologically fragile sea and marshlands, killing untold numbers of marine life, and depressing local economies, along with failure after failure of corporate technological solutions to plug the hellish hole they had drilled—McClure’s vatic voice had already described how “the lapis lazuli kingfisher…

hovers
over
the
crystal
pool
as we float on a sea
of petroleum.

The essay is linked here:

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/weishaus/Poetica/blog-4.htm

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June 3, 2010

John Olson on McClure’s Mysterioso 1

Filed under: Sponsors — Tags: John Olson, Michael McClure, Mysteriosos — Paul Nelson @ 11:18 am

Each review John Olson does is a life-force, a huge energy source in itself. Have you see his latest book The Nothing that Is? Damn! This is what writing can be.

He looks into Michael McClure’s Mysterioso 1 here:

http://tillalala.blogspot.com/2010/05/anatomy-of-poem.html

Again, sound from McClure’s recent reading at Moe’s Books in Berkeley is here:

http://telegraph-books.net/mondayarchive/audio/100519-mcclure.mp3

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May 29, 2010

Michael McClure, reading at Moe’s in Berkeley

Filed under: Sponsors — Tags: Charles Olson, John Olson, Michael McClure, Moe's Books, Mysteriosos, Projective Verse, Robert Duncan — Paul Nelson @ 10:42 am

May 19, 2010

Michael read to a partisan crowd at the legendary Moe’s Books in Berkeley on Wednesday, May 19, 2010. The audio available here, skips past the introduction and the assorted GRAHHRS offered by the audience as Michael is welcomed to the mic.

He read from his latest, Mysteriosos, which John Olson reviewed here. McClure is revealed at the top of his game with this book and the reading confirms it. Charles Olson articulated the process of composition which has enabled McClure’s stunning gesture in his essay Projective Verse, Olson was not able to accomplish what McClure has done. McClure started writing projectively in the 1950’s at about age 22 and 55 years later, continues to mine this process, writing some of his best work.

Olson, on the other hand, died at 60 after coming to poetry later in life and knew he needed another ten years to accomplish what he had set out to do.

Likewise, Robert Duncan, another one of McClure’s guides, took a 15 year break from publishing to reveal Ground Work: Before the War / In The Dark, a project which did not have the same energy and potency of three earlier books, The Opening of the Field, Roots and Branches and Bending the Bow.

My review of Mysteriosos is forthcoming in the Pacific Rim Review of Books, but in the meantime, enjoy the audio of McClure in Berkeley, and remember that you are an animal connected to everything that was with the power to shape that which will be.

(More on my take on Projective Verse is available here.)

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May 11, 2010

Brussels

Filed under: Sponsors — Tags: Franca Bellarsi, Gillian Parrish, Jay Ramsay, Lyn McCredden, Michael McClure, Pacific Rim Review of Books, Paul McDonald, Peter Cockelburgh, Projective Verse, Seamus Cashman, Tools of the Sacred — Paul Nelson @ 9:05 am

As you may know by now, your friendly-neighborhood Splabman traveled with his bride-to-be to Brussels in Belguim (& day-tripped to Paris & Bruges) for the Tools of the Sacred conference.

Brussels photos are linked here.
The essay I wrote for the conference is here.
The powerpoint I created for my Brussels presentation is here.

Meeting Gillian Parrish (Washington University, St. Louis), and witnessing her presentation: “This Cunning World Made Flat: The Practiced Gaze of Bone Pagoda and Buddhist Tantra” was a highlight.

I enjoyed Lyn McCredden’s:
“Sacred and Secular in Australian Poetry”

as well as Peter Cockelburgh, whose presentation on Pierre Joris was quite interesting. Peter is a Belgian and struck me as a quintessential European, with his mastery of three languages and ability to move seamlessly between them. That aids his Joris research.

and enjoyed meeting Loren Schwartz of York University in Toronto, Michael Heller the Oppen scholar, Trevor Carolan of Vancouver, BC (& the Pacific Rim Review of Books) and the conference organizer and all-around generous and gracious host, Franca Bellarsi. She said the next conference is in 2013 and will be Biofilia and Biophobia.

I did a reading with Peter Cockelburgh and four other writers, Jay Ramsay, the very funny Paul McDonald and Seamus Cashman of the Black Earth Institute.

I’d welcome your feedback on the powerpoint and the essay.

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