Research Catalog

Title

Mule kick blues : and last poems / Michael McClure ; edited with an Introduction by Garrett Caples.

Author

McClure, Michael

Publication

San Francisco : City Lights Books, 2021.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Caples, Garrett T.

Description

xxvii, 115 pages : illustration; 23 cm

Summary

"The final book of poems from a Beat Generation legend, Mule Kick Blues finds McClure restlessly innovating until the end. Completed over the last years of his life, Mule Kick Blues is the final book of poems by Beat Generation legend Michael McClure. Taking its title from an innovative sequence of homages to blues musicians like Leadbelly, Willie Dixon, and Howlin' Wolf, and evoking Kerouac's concept of "blues" poems, Mule Kick Blues contains stark meditations on the poet's mortality as well as the nature and Zen poems for which McClure is known. With shout-outs to lifelong friends like Philip Whalen, Diane di Prima, and Gary Snyder, the long poem "Fragments of Narcissus," and the profound and moving sequence "Death Poems," Mule Kick Blues is a definitive statement by one of the most significant American poets of the last 60 years"--

Alternative Title

Mule kick blues and last poems

Subject

Poetry

Genre/Form

Poetry.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Contents

I. Mortalities -- "Mortality is beauty the beast spirit" -- Ageing -- Winter solstice -- Four A.M. -- This body -- Thinking of the poet Su Tung-p'o -- ((Dharma)) -- Spring/fall -- from dogan sonata two -- Death poems -- Restore the ordinary -- Two faces -- Layers -- Listening as dust -- II. Mule kick blues -- Mule kick blues -- Edge chunk for Willie Dixon -- Black wine -- Deep mud blues -- Howlin' blues -- Leadbelly blues -- Forty songs -- III. Fragments of Narcissus -- IV. Rites of beasts -- Tantra -- Flower garland froth -- "Make the present moment the true source" -- "Amiri-Osiris" -- For Jack Spicer -- The real one -- A black notebook -- For Jack Kerouac -- For Diane di Prima -- For Zoketsu Norman Fischer -- For Norma Schlesinger -- A garnet -- "guardians/right of beast" -- Dharma exercises -- The fleshy nave.

Call Number

JFE 21-4584

ISBN

• 9780872868144
• 0872868141

LCCN

• 2020040963
• 40030520697

OCLC

1196245180

Author

McClure, Michael, author.

Title

Mule kick blues : and last poems / Michael McClure ; edited with an Introduction by Garrett Caples.

Publisher

San Francisco : City Lights Books, 2021.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references.

Added Author

Caples, Garrett T., editor.

Other Standard Identifier

40030520697

Research Call Number

JFE 21-4584