Plum Stones: Cartoons of No Heaven

“In McClure’s poems, the shapes are abstractions like DNA (statement of relation and in some poems one-word centered lines on a page) which as a language can’t ever be the same as the object (such as ‘black lily’). Yet he breaks down a distinction between text as object and the phenomenal object of ‘black lilies’ (words), and physical sensation (of the ‘speaker’ or reader of these words)…

He transposes (enacts) the (comic book bubble) language of his poetry as theater; it is a mode of theater in both his poetry and his plays – in both, the distinction betweent he surface and intuititve apprehension is broken down – or between that which is ‘visual’ and (that as) language.” — Leslie Scalapino

“In his preface to this book (O Books, 2002), McClure described its contents as “the energy of consciousness moving vertically on a scroll.” PLUM STONES is the continuation of a journey which began with the 2000 release, TOUCHING THE EDGE. At once, these poems move us into uncharted waters: The poet alone moving through time and the timeless mind, stepping slowly now, aware of the craters just beyond the hissing tongues of water, aware of the snakes and goblins, the poet alone moving through himself into the sacred and holy place of no thought — that soft and peaceful place where there is no thought and no preoccupation with the Self. No ego. No eyes. Only spirit. Ghostly peace. And simply content now to be.” —John Aiello, in the August 2003 issue of The Electric Review

Read Jack Foley’s review of PLUM STONES at The Alsop Review.

Michael McClure is “a poet of the sensorium coursing in the realms of consciousness, a scholar of the visionary, a professor of beauty, a flashpoint at the intersection of the spiritual and the real.” — Lewis Mac Adams in L.A. Weekly