The Mammals

The plays in this book were written during the same period as DARK BROWN and in the same manner — THE BLOSSOM was written spontaneously after “three days of careful preparation”. Together they form the catalyst for later work — the first use of grahhr language in THE FEAST and the involvement with Billy the Kid in THE BLOSSOM.

Read as poetry (“projective verse turned to theater”) these dramas, in the same way as DARK BROWN, explode the traditional separation of the writer from his work (“writing is not a product but an extension of the body”). As theater they re-examine the complex relationships of characters to each other and to the audience.

Michael McClure’s foreword:
THESE ARE RENEGADE PLAYS. Even more renegade than The Beard was after its fourteenth nightly arrest in Los Angeles.

The dramas in The Mammals have had few performances—and those by fugitive groups. The plays have pleased the actors and small audiences and displeased critics. That is the way it should be.

Besides being outlaw dramas the three plays are projective verse turned to theater. These are energy poems that want the meat of actors’ bodies or the flesh of readers’ imaginations. In a sense they are spiritual autobiography of their times — like calligraphy of history written in flashes on cell walls.

The Mammals are secret poems I have not wanted to be secret — here they are.

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