Antechamber and Other Poems

Michael McClure goes at the Godhead the way some men pound at a stuck door. Since the late Fifties, he's tried screaming curses, grunting meaninglessly in "beast language," writing "meat science essays" - and now he's giving Keatsian rhyme a shot in the cause of body-awareness and pan-everythingism. McClure may be our only genuine megaphone poet. "YES! THERE IS BUT ONE/ POLITIC AND THAT/ IS BIOLOGY." "I/ AM/ A MAMMAL/ PATRIOT." Still, with all his talk about the "holistic" and the "flow of the biomass" and "the shattered substrate incorporating chop and moil," McClure is, as he ages, getting a little calmer; when his eyes aren't goggling at the biomass at a hundred rpm's, he can even write a fine, alert poem like "By the Highway." But he's no less brave than ever. Few contemporary poets so consistently skirt the hilarious. Or so often fall into it: "We're otters swimming in the shadows of the now." McClure is the kind of poet it would be great fun to read if you knew no English - all those capital letters and the ants-in-the-pants energy! For English speakers, though, subject to understanding, this Whole Me Catalogue is so much rapturous farina. (Kirkus Reviews)