Gary Gach Review

Gary Gach

M I N D M A N I F E S T I N G

Review of Touching the Edge: Dharma Devotions from the Hummingbird Sangha by Michael McClure Shambhala Publications; Boston, 1999; 128 pp; $16 (paper)

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 work has always been typified by an expressionist vitalism. Now it gains a new, genuine, metaphysical drama as it juxtaposes nonaction 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.

Two original poems by Michael McClure appear on Gary Gach's website, specifically at:

word.to/mmhaiku.html
and
word.to/froth.html