The poetry of Michael McClure is a highly personal statement, moving from the visionary to the polemical, the abstract to the graphic, a poetry which Allen Ginsberg called “a blob of protoplasmic energy.” His style manifests itself in eccentric punctuation, capital letters, and “beast” sounds; words become action, forcing the objects of his poems into abstraction or materializing themselves into forms.
In this new collection of poems, McClure again demonstrates the unique quality which led the London Times Literary Supplement to call his work “poetry and prose which is one of the more remarkable achievements in recent American literature.” Star contains the poet’s “13 Mad Sonnets,” the poem “The Surge,” for Stan Brakhage, the avant-garde filmmaker, the entire Love Lion BookThe Beard, about the same two characters.