Touching the Edge

A native Midwesterner born in 1932, Michael McClure is associated with the San Francisco renaissance of the mid 1950's, and his work, in the tradition of Blake and Artaud, is prophetic in tone and usually quite experimental on the printed page. His plays, "The Beard" (1965) and "The Tooth of Crime" are underground theater classics. He is part of the poet's theater movement that was revived in San Francisco in the 1980's. His more recent work includes Persian Pony, and Mephisto and Other Poems. His other books include Rain Mirror; Simple Eyes & Other Poems; Rebel Lions; Ghost Tantras; Of Indigo and Saffron: New and Selected Poems; Passage; and the nonfiction work, Scratching the Surface of the Beats.

He was a professor of poetry at California College of the Arts, a position he held for 43 years. He was given an honorary doctorate degree as the longest-tenured faculty member at the art college. After a career of more than 60 years, Michael McClure died at the age of 87, on May 4, 2020.

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