RIP Michael McClure

Always my favorite of the Beat poets, a long and useful life.

Michael McClure, famed Beat poet who helped launch the SF Renaissance, dead at 87

Michael McClure, the young poet recruited to put together the famed Six Gallery readings in 1955 that launched the San Francisco Renaissance and the legend of the Beats, died Monday, May 4, at his home in the Oakland hills. He was 87.

McClure died from the lingering effects of a stroke he suffered in spring 2019, Garrett Caples, a close friend and editor at City Lights Publishers, told The Chronicle the day after McClure’s death.

“Michael was incredibly gracious, erudite, and totally dedicated to the poet’s calling,” said Elaine Katzenberger, publisher of City Lights, which put out McClure’s works going all the way back to 1963’s “Meat Science Essays.” “He was a sometimes-trickster, most definitely a provocateur, and yet, quite solicitous and patient, a sage who was beautiful inside and out.”

That first public reading for McClure, then 22 years old, was overshadowed by the introduction of “Howl,” by Allen Ginsberg. But McClure outlasted all of the Beats in a career that spanned more than 60 years. He published more than 30 books of poetry, plays and anthologies, most recently 2017’s “Persian Pony” and 2016’s “Mephistos and other Poems,” the latter anchored by a poem that took him 16 years to write.

“The poems dive through time and space like dolphins through the waves,” McClure said at the time of publication of “Mephistos,” released by City Lights.

https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/books/michael-mcclure-famed-beat-poet-w...