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 79th in the sequence & neither the 78th or 80th
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.