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The McCluriad

Poem by Jack Foley


Octogenarian?
The word seems scarcely applicable to the man I see
sitting across the table
of this El Cerrito eatery.

Magnanimous
Inquisitive
Challenging
Happy
Amorous
Elegant
Laughing

“Writhing multidimensionality of thought” *
“The surge of life drifts in every direction.”
“I think all art should be extreme.”

“Demands for communication are of small voice when art is pushing towards a oneness with the possibilities of imagination.”

“EACH. EACH SIDE OF EACH DUST SPECK
turning in sunlight is a movie.
C
A
V
E
S
in the movies
reach to the tiny end of infinity
and each speck grows
to fill all.”

“If the type and placements of lines seem strange, read them aloud
and they will take their shape”

MANJUSHRI
Comedian
Clairvoyant
Lover
Ursine (California variety)
Radiant
Energy

“seated on his white lion,
swinging the sword
of
CONSCIOUSNESS
into deeper mines
than our knowing”

“a self portrait without a mirror”

Here is a perfect melting and merging of all realms, the all-in-one and the one-in-all, the dissolving of being and non-being, the convergence of Voidness and existence…All these mysteries of totality consist…in one basic principle: namely, all things…are void. In contrast to doctrines of various monisms and monotheisms, the Hwa Yen Doctrine holds that the wonders of Dharmadh tu are brought into play not because of the one, but because of the great Void. This is as if to say that zero, not one, is the foundation of all numbers.

the mutual penetration and Non-Obstruction of realms **

“Would a sensitive man of Periclean Greece taken up from time and placed in the N.Y.C. Garment Center at rush hour, or in Peking, or Tokyo, or London, imagine himself in Hell?”

In the act of play, and under the influence of the rebellious imagination, even war transforms itself

“the simultaneous expression of spirit and matter.”

AGNOSIA
knowing through not knowing

“Perhaps blackness is the best window”

“a full measure of black wine”

But now you put a question to me asking, How shall I think about [God], and what is He? And to this I can only answer you, I do not know ***

“I sensed that [Antonin] Artaud’s poetry, a breakthrough incarnate, was a way into the open field of poetry and into the open shape of verse and into the physicality of thought.”

Not symbolize but simple eyes

“Sculptured hands
of a seated figure.
Half-closed eyes.
Plain as disturbance and straw
and Grandpa’s tin snuff box.”

“thoughts
in
the
hands
make
one
big
zero”
“The experience of self is what
all things seek
because it is the deeper breath
they breathe”

“the mind
in a mirror of flames”

—

His mater is delectable,
Solacious, and commendable;
His English well allowed,
So as it is emprowed,
For as it is employed,
There is this mighty Void,
At these dayes moch commended,
O Godde, would men have amended
His English, and do they barke,
And mar all they warke?
McClure, that famus clerke,
His termes were not darke,
But plesaunt, easy, and plaine;
No worde he wrote in vaine.

surge blackness meat SWIRL gesture kid
grahhr

There are certain words that are forever Michael McClure.

Notes

* All matter in quotation marks by Michael McClure. The passage in Middle English is an adaptation of a passage by John Skelton in praise of Geoffrey Chaucer.
* * Garma C.C. Chang’s The Buddhist Teaching of Totality—one of McClure’s favorite books.
*** The Cloud of Unknowing.

Jack Foley is a San Francisco poet and critic. He is the author of the monumental Visions & Affiliations: A California Literary Time Line 1940-2005. He lives in Oakland, CA and June 5, 2010 was proclaimed “Jack Foley Day” in Berkley.

This review first appeared in Pacific Rim Review of Books #19