Michael McClure Books

This book has a lot of great myths in it. I enjoyed using this book as a text book for a class.

This is a great book for an upper level anthropology class.
I'm reading it for my "Anthropology of Religion" class and it's been a very interesting book.

This was a book that I read for a Mythology and Folklore class. I liked the book because it was easy to read and it contained a lot of history. Having the background information to accompany the stories was helpful and made the reading more interesting. Highly recommended.

Though many have attempted such a feat, in Myth & Knowing, Leonard and McClure have finally written the foundational textbook for comparative mythologies, and, in doing so, have also created a remarkable text for exploring the transition from oral tradition to written text. As the title suggests, Myth & Knowing moves beyond a simple reiteration of the stories by grouping them into conceptual chapters (Creation Myths, The Female Divine, The Male Divine, Trickster Myths, and Sacred Places)which not only invites direct comparisons but creates archetypal structures that become the critical basis for analyzing modern mythologies and even modern epistomologies. I have used this text with great success in introductory mythology, religion, and literature classes.

Myth and Knowing was used for my Mythology in Literature class at University and it was a great book. The chapter divisions are helpful for the way my class was taught. The chapters are divded into groups like; The Male Divine and Creation Myths. In this format you can look at the many many different creation myths out there all in one section to see the differences and similarities. The book covers a huge range of cultures in the stories used for examples about the topic at hand. From Iceland to Africa and America it offers stories on how the many people groups of the world view the divine.

Finally, a scholar has dug through the pop culture mud of the Beats to bedrock below: They weren't just citified tea-heads as Life magazine in the Fifties (and too many academics since) would have us believe. These writers were deeply tuned into the natural world and drew upon it for inspiration and some of their best writing--even the seemingly most urban of the lot--Kerouac. Case and point: Kerouac's "greening" in "Dharma Bums." Phillips' discussion of this novel is especially astute; and it sent me digging for my old copy. Similarly, Phillips' treatment of the Beats and Buddhism (Snyder in particular) is also refreshingly clear and original--not an easy thing to do. Phillips' research, including interviews with McClure, Welch and Snyder, is thorough and convincing. Moreover, his prose is sharp and unencumbered with trendy jargon. I predict Beat scholars will reconsider certain assumptions upon reading this book--and Beat fans will find this to be a unique and excellent addition to the ever-growing Beat canon.

Wow- what a book. This book sheds new light on a topic I feel has already been covered. Phillips' personal interviews are fantastic. I would love to have Phillips for a professor, wait- I do. Phillips is the man, and so is his book. If you are reading this Dr. Phillips can I have a 4.0? You know who I am!

The author sheds light on a side of the beat culture
which has been ignored by the mass media for far too
long. Many a word has been written about the Beat's
frontal attack upon the sleepy surburban world of
America circa late 1950s, but few have bottered to
examine their spiritual awareness as related to Mother
Earth. They were fresh voices who found spiritual
rebirth through nature and were in the forefront of
those questioning the prevalent doctrine of consummerism.
I would heartily recommend this well written book.

Loved it

This is a really fantastic play - from what I've read of it. I did a scene from The Beard a few weeks ago in English class & it was just fantastic. The two characters in the play are Billy the Kid - fabled outlaw of American folklore - & Jean Harlow - cinema star & uber-Marilyn Monroe. The entire play I gather is a meeting between these two in the blue velvet Eternity. Eternity like where Jack & Rose meet in the end of Titanic (& the boat sinks for those who haven't seen it). This play is just sort of conversation like & not to pretentious like you might imagine the blue velvet Eternity to be. There is a little bit of swearing so all you prudes keep away etc etc. The sexual tension is great. I like it.

Mirrors of Inflections thru Sapphirous seven pieces of Jasperlik
e Facets thru Mysterious Gelatinous Seagiants of Good Lucifer's Anemoneworld of Aquariusesses' rotten bananaes thru hotspot of white collar corpses of Gelatinous Seagiants were mysterious lef
t alone where earthquakes shakens by burrowing mudgiants where ... ... ... ., ttyl

" ... Michael McClure shares a place with the great William Blake, with the visionary Shelley, with the passionate D.H. Lawrence ... " - Robert Creeley

Poetry exists to be read aloud ~ like music, to be played, embodied. Michael McClure's poetry is unmistakable in its look as well as its vision. Roughly centered, it reads as the body language of a living organism ~ muscular, as well as mental. Not only are sentences sometimes chopped. Like this. But also lines can break after just one word; some even letter by letter. The net effect is a welcome slowdown of mind awake to the richness of life. The bigness of minute particulars, as well as the infinite; being; space; etc.

One of the original Beats, McClure is a hip prodigy reaching maturity gracefully, a rare thing. His recent Buddhist practice is like the capstone of a lifetime's overarching concerns. Marrying mysticism and biology, his wok has always been typified by an expressionist vitalism. Now it gains a new, genuine, metaphysical drama as it juxtaposes non-action to verbal "action painting." The image and the imageless. The miraculous and the everyday. Cosmic and domestic. Nondualism.

TOUCHING THE EDGE is a book-length poem, recording a home-video epic of the process of practice. The effect of reading it (aloud) is as tantric as Francesco Clemente's watercolors, as psychedelic ("mind-manifesting") as the Flower Garland Sutra. Informed by the Soto Zen tradition of sitting just to sit, his writing-just-to-write traces the shape of mind in motion (and at stillness) with a wealth of keen perception along the way. Apples blush. Cats perform Noh drama under an apple tree. A poet dreams of lions and Herakles. And rice roars.

This craft ~ a seemingly artless art ~ can carry us across.

Few reviews notice the delicious subtext -- a biography of the poet's calico kitten growing to cathood through the year of zazen these poems reflect, a constant reminder of animal Buddha-nature. I'm reminded of Kerouac's line about "the little cat crying for meat, himself a little meat soul..." As for the main theme, _Booklist- gets it right:

"Beat poets McClure and [others] caused a great seismic shift in literature with their fresh and liberated approaches to language and focus on the chimerical workings of the mind. Their meditative perspectives led not only to revolutionary poetry but to sustained and beautifully articulated Buddhist practices. In his new collection, McClure presents a series of dharma devotions -- lithely observant and gently philosophical musings -- that flow down the center of elongated pages like brooks, tree trunks, reeds, or the brush strokes of calligraphy. As the reader's eyes slide happily down these wavy word columns, joyful images of the natural world -- hummingbirds and raccoons, honeysuckles and waterfalls, fog and stone -- open like flowers in the verdant field of McClure's sweetly bemused commentary on our wayward nature. Delicate as his poems are, they nevertheless pack a punch, powered by the tension of dualities and charged with agile leaps of thought."

_Touching the Edge_ does a beautiful job of reminding today's readers why and how Buddhism spoke to the original Beat generation -- and continues to speak to its heirs.

My son was given this book as a gift and he is almost 3. It is a book that will grow with him and is illustrted beautifully. It is really a lovely book about life cycles and hope in the face of darkness. I highly reccomend it and will be buying copies as gifts.

McClure's poetry does need to be read aloud (get Love Lion, his album, for a demonstration) but this is good a transcript to work from as any; a perfect lead in to his books, poems of which are from nine of.

As a person fortunate enough to have met Michael McClure, it seems only natural that I would appreciate this book. However, I read this book a few years before I was actually privileged with Mr. McClure's presence. What I found so refreshing about this book is that not only are we, as readers, exposed to new insight into the Beat phenomenom but we are graced with the knowledge of someone who was there and lived it. McClure allows us into his mind and gives us a private tour of what many literary individuals have meant to him. While there are many wonderful and deserving books out there on the topic, one can't help but feel blessed upon discovering this beauty. I found that it not only allowed me to experience literature in a whole new element but it also allowed me to experience it through the eyes of a quiet master of the art. This is definitely a read that I highly recommend.

Michael McClure is one of THE most talented, powerful, and original poets alive, without a question. He paints a beautiful picture with his chaotic style. Never have I read a poem that had such an effect on me, after you read ANY of these three poems, you will understand.

I did not know anything about the Crosleys until I read this book and was amazed at all the products Powel Crosley dreamt up and created. It is a very thorough book about their lives and successes, and failures, but I give it 4 stars only because the writing sometimes detracted me from the story. (How many Exit, Stage lefts/rights can you put in a book and who even writes that way?) plus too much info about minor or unimportant things (Lewis' dog?) but still a good read, and entertaining and informative.

Great read for a radio fan or anyone interested in early 20th century business moguls.

I bought this book for my brother who owned a Crosley years ago, but I read it before I gave it to him. Great book! One of the best I have read in a long time.

It was a great history lesson and you do not have to be a Crosley buff to enjoy it.

Would highly recommend.

Richard Flory

The person for whom I purchased the book absolutely loves it!! It's the story, the pictures and presentation that just makes reading it so enjoyable. I'm very glad that I made this purchase.

I'm sitting in a home full of computers, MP3 players, dvd recorders and players, a satellite TV box, and scores of electric appliances that are smarter than I am. Reading of a time when consumer electronics were unknown, and the primary electric appliance was a lightbulb, is like looking into the dark ages. Well, not quite. But you know what I mean.

The Crosley name is one that I've heard around my home throughout my life, but with the exception of a Crosley radio on a shelf, my knowledge of the company or the men that founded the firm was fuzzy at best. The authors have done an outstanding job at fleshing out Powel and Lewis Crosley and the world they lived in and revolutionized.

Many a novel I've read non-stop, but this is the first biography that I've done an "all-nighter" with.

The authors had no axe to grind, the times were well fleshed out, and one's faith in the ability of someone to think it up and do it, is reaffirmed. It was chock full of interesting information and facts, and I found myself checking Google satellite maps for locations mentioned in the book (Yes, the Arlington St. location still exisits and the satellite pic catches the executive tower, one-time home of WLW).

There is some bumpy writing, as noted in a few other reviews. I blame not the authors, but the editor. The boys really like their cliches. Lawyers are always "Sharpening their pencils," people come and go "Exit Stage right/left, Enter stage right/left;" and so many variations of "Masses not the classes" permeated the text, I wondered if they had some sort of Bolshevik thing going on.

That aside, this guy will be giving several copies of this book for Christmas this year - and I can't think of a better testimonial to the book.