A question implicit in Michael McClure’s Fifteen Fleas, for me at least, is one of timing – of velocity, really. As the stanza I quoted yesterday suggests, the play of aural elements increases the speed with which the ear & reading mind process what is on the page. It literally skips along. This is not an unusual element for a text heavy on its own sense of oral presentation – one can find parallels in the writing of Anne Waldman, Charles Olson & Allen Ginsberg. One finds it elsewhere in McClure’s work as well, yet he has always been remarkably skillful at the timing of details in his poetry – it’s an aspect that has always kept his more science oriented texts from ever seeming dry or convoluted – he knows just when to dole the next detail out. He has always been, at heart, a philosophical writer, but where others might write dry, lean, carefully nuanced ironies (bitterly so if your name is Bill Bronk), McClure proceeds through the same territory shouting & laughing – and knowing also when to whisper.

 

Indeed, I think one could read McClure very profitably as an intense & extended study of velocity & range. Consider, for example, “The Foam” from McClure’s 1994 volume, Simple Eyes:

 

                IT IS BRAVE TO BE THE FOAM

                    and sing the foam

 

          IT IS BRAVE TO BE THE FOAM,

 

                              not really!

 

      Inside is no place but an infinitude

                                                   of places

                          -- positions

                                    becoming everything

                                              in there.

 

           THIS

              is

      THE FOAM

 

                      LIFE-LIKE STARS,

                                              they too are the foam.

     The deer antler fallen on the grass within the yard

                                                                     is foam

          as is the dew that mottles it.

 

           Thousand foot deep clouds of one-celled beings

           with shells of silicon and waving pseudopods

             in oceans in another time and place

                                                                  are foam

           as are the uplifted peaks of shale they leave behind.

             The visions of William Blake in future caves of thought

                  that are meat and plastic-steel are foam,

                            --as are Whitehead's luminous dreams

                                                   --all foam

 

     Matter, antimatter, Forces, particles, clouds of mud,

           the wind that blows in cypress trees, pools of oil

                on desert floors.

 

     THE BOY'S EYES NO LONGER SQUINT, LOOK DOWN

 

          and there is nothing in his hand

                nothing in his hand that's everything

 

            and he stares through squeezed caves

                of blackness

                                         at a man's eyes

                that shape a photograph of him

                     upon the fields of war and appetite

     for iridescent foam of nacre-red and green and

 

                         MORTAR

                            THUD

 

                on beaches on a wave-lapped shore

 

           WHERE     HIS     MOTHER/FATHER     SCREAM     AND

                SHOUT

                and throw each other on the floor

 

                          and

 

                          HE

 

                        HAS

                  ! ARISEN !

 

                       ebullient

                       from this exuberance

      and wears his red Y upon his woolen chest

                  for it is his

                --as is the future state

 

                THIS IS NOT METAPHOR

                   but fact:

      the green fur forest just beyond the sleek

      and glossy plastic edge; shrews in their hunt

      for crickets, hiding in moon shadows

      underneath a rusting ford. Blue-black waves

           beat on hulls of ferries. Light moves

           from one place, or condition, to another!

 

      HE'S THERE NOW AND EVERYWHERE

 

      ____________________________________

 

      HE'S THERE NOW AND EVERYWHERE

 

                as are the covers of detective magazines

                  with evil scientists who scalpel-out

                the hearts of large-bosomed virgins

                  strapped to beds, then implant

                the pump of chrome that sits upon

                    the operating table;

                as is the broken toothpick lying

                    in the rain; as are the

 

                            HUGE

 

                            HUGE

 

                            HUGE

 

           PASSION THAT HE FEELS

 

     (shaking in his boy's legs and cock

           --And those are the stuff of stars

     that are the flesh of passions that he spins

     into this rush of neurons and of popping foam.

 

     These make immortal perfect shapes of the moments

     that hold copper-colored leaves or twigs within

                                                   their hands,

     with each foot upon a war and each arm

     and every thought in one.

 

     AN ANIMAL IS A MIND!

 

     --A MIND--AND DOES NOT KNOW WHERE IT STOPS!

 

     --Knows little of bounds or limits or edges.

 

     --Goes on into all times and directions and dimensions.

 

     --KNOWING ONLY THROUGH LIMITS THAT CANNOT BE KNOWN!

 

     --IS A BEING OF SHEER SPIRIT!

 

     --IS A BEING OF SHEER SPIRIT!

 

     --IS A BEING OF BOUNDLESS MEAT!

 

     --IS EVERYTHING IN ONE DOT OF THE CONFLAGRATION!

 

     IS EVERYTHING IN ONE BARE DOT

 

     IS EVERYTHING IN ONE DOT OF THE CONFLAGRATION!!

 

     This is war that he is, and melts in

 

     AND

     IT

 

     IS

     NOT

 

     FOAM.

 

     HE

 

     IS

     A

 

     BE-

     ING

 

                         AND IT IS NOT WAR,

                                 HE IS A MAN

                                 !                     !

 

                   HE IS AN ANIMAL BEING

                                         A

                                      MIND

 

                   HE IS AN ANIMAL BEING

                                         A

                                      MIND

 

 

                        through the windows of his eyes

                               fingers and his eyes

 

 

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to excerpt from a McClure poem precisely because so many of its effects depend directly on context & because velocity is not just a local device, but rather one generated by the whole of a text going forward. If I were to cite the stanza about the “green fur forest” above out of its context, it’s almost impossible to hear how it functions in contrast both to what comes before & what follows. And to a degree unmatched by other poets, certainly of his generation, these effects are not incidental, but central to the McClure experience, precisely because experience cannot be absorbed atemporally, outside of time.

 

This is what makes Fifteen Fleas ultimately a problematic book, containing just 15 of 250 such stanzas – the one I quoted yesterday is the 79^th in the sequence & neither the 78^th or 80^th are to be found here. It’s almost a strobe-effect sort of editing, like catching small snatches of a song, its larger melody hidden. The impact is to make me crave the larger book.