20 Questions with Michael McCLURE
Does the revolver really have white hair?
Yesterday, the day preceding the 40th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination was the closest thing, in my lifetime in the US, to Krystal Nacht in 1930s Germany. On Crystal Night, Nazi thugs and officers crashed down the windows of businesses and homes of Jews and beat Jews on the streets. The streets were so littered with broken glass and teeth that they looked like crystal. Yesterday, November 21st in Miami, the Police, funded by eight and a half million dollars from the 87 billion that the Administration is sending to Iraq, staged a police riot. They used concussion grenades, pepper gas, stun guns, batons, wooden and rubber bullets, and extreme physical brutality to injure and terrorize many of the ten thousand protestors at the ministerial meeting of the Free Trade Area of the Americas. I heard some of this live on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now radio show (on the web www.democracynow.com). I heard people being beaten, screaming, and pleading for mercy. There was no mention of this in the US papers I saw. There was no mention of the 100,000 protestors against George Bush who marched in London on the previous day. When I roll out of bed and put my feet on the floor I feel like it is a new world. I don't know about white-haired revolvers but my hair is white and I believe "The revolution will not be televised."
Where were you Nov. 22, 1963?
(Written 11/ 22/ 63 on the fly leaf of Whitman's LEAVES OF GRASS.)
"Today, Friday, I take out this book again to read "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed" J.F.K. brutally murdered today! THE DEATH OF A MAMMAL what will you say to me today Whitman? All of us thought of you with hope J.F.K. even the chillest of anarchists in this COLD WAR. The time for resentment between men has departed. NO MURDER nor ASSASSINATION may be justified. I weep in my house as others weep in the streets. The tears are lion cubs of saline water. The Continent America must give birth to the Cherubic Civilization envisioned by Whitman & Melville. The boundary between art & politics & science has crumbled as it did in Blake's THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL. The absence of John Kennedy is a sorrowful voided blot upon our consciousness and yet history will see him through our tears as a confused man-animal. And I had vowed never to forgive him for the death of children in Cuba! Farewell sad energetic creature!"
Straight no chaser?
I was seventeen in Wichita and running with beboppers from Kansas City smoking watery dope and going to Black jam sessions at late night. I went for the thrill of the romance and adventure seeing myself drunk in the tinted mirror and loving the edge in the Black bop ethos. But I didn't feel the music, I loved Scarlatti and Monteverdi; then one night in a friend's apartment I HEARD Thelonious Monk's "Mysterioso" and "Straight No Chaser." IT WAS AN ILLUMINATION I discovered elegance and improvisational genius. I'll never forget.
How did you implement your escape from Wichita?
It's all down in black and white and technicolor mind-flashes in the first half of my novel of a boy's life THE MAD CUB.
If only one of your books is to be included in a time capsule, which should be chosen?
I CAN'T BEAR THE THOUGHT OF THAT! My first idea is THREE POEMS (comprised of DARK BROWN, RARE ANGEL, DOLPHIN SKULL). Then I know it would have to be REBEL LIONS then I can't bear the thought of leaving out my plays THE BEARD, JOSEPHINE, GARGOYLE CARTOONS, THE RED SNAKE, VKTMS. BUT I CAN'T DO IT AT ALL WITHOUT MY UNPUBLISHED BOOK FLEAS (250 RHYMED AND SPONTANEOUS MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD) It's impossible.
If you could characterize the current president as a cartoon
character, who might that be?
Wonky Worm.
Imagine that you are a being from another world seeing the earth for the first time. What first message might you send to your home planet?
―Found a gorgeous place!
What color is consciousness?
The color of peyote and rainbows, and the trillion senses we do not use yet.
What would you like to be when you grow up?
A man of moderation and a tyger of wrath.
Does breath sculpt the matter?
Energy sculpts the matter and breath indicates the perimeter.
Was Olson right?
Charles Olson's proposal of Projective Verse is the cleanest and clearest antidote to watery verse.
Are there caves in your psyche?
Philip Whalen was hospitalized and was given pain killers (which he despised) and being quite high he pointed out that we were on a boat. I was sitting on the chair next to his hospital bed on the "boat" and we made a tour of the river and talked about what was on the banks. Largely the banks were notable for the presence of genteel and handsomely dressed polar bears and exotic buildings and forests (Philip saw some small polka dotted dinosaurs), but mostly I liked it when the river ran between high banks or cliffs and we could see into caves which were occupied by dancers in filmy blue material.
Do you have a New York story?
In 1960 when I moved to New York, Frank O'Hara took my family of the time and myself to see St. Brigids Cathedral, then to the top of the Empire State Building, and then to his apartment to meet his partner Joe.
Was Herbert Huncke really guilty of everything?
Yes.
As mammals, what is our most important duty on this third stone from the sun?
To preserve inspiration and imagination, and to remember that Diane di Prima said: "THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST THE IMAGINATION!"
How might one get George W. Bush to open his third eye?
If anyone opens Bush's third eye, I hope they open Cheney's third eye first.
How do you wish to be remembered?
I will be remembered differently by everyone who knows me and that's the way I'd have it.
What is the prognosis for America?
Alfred North Whitehead wrote: "It is the business of the future to be dangerous."
What's your favorite poison?
Johnny Walker Black Label and I have outgrown it.
What drew you to the Barbary Coast?
City Lights Book Store.
What headline would you run on the front page of The New York Times if you were tomorrow's editor-in-chief?
IN 24 HOURS MICHAEL MOORE BEGINS AS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF THIS PAPER
Do you have a favorite Robert Creeley story?
From LIGHTING THE CORNERS: On Art, Nature, and the Visionary, by Michael McClure: "Bob is as much a part of my life as the bed I sleep on or as the sky I see out of my window or Mount Tamalpais there in the distance or Point Bonita where it slips into the Pacific Ocean like the head of Disney's Pluto the Pup. Like those things and the billowy anise-scented fennel plants on the corner in the vacant lot, Bob is part of my life every day. If it were not for Bob and his poetry I'd be somebody else."
How can we ever thank you?
De nada.
