Description
Praise for Michael McClure: "Michael McClure shares a place with the great William Blake, with the visionary Shelley, with the passionate D.H. Lawrence."--Robert Creeley "McClure's poetry is a blob of protoplasmic energy."--Allen Ginsberg "Without McClure's roar there would have been no Sixties."--Dennis Hopper Michael McClure is a living legend. One of the poets who participated in the famous Six Gallery reading that featured the public debut of Allen Ginsberg's landmark poem Howl, he was immortalized by Jack Kerouac in his novel Big Sur. A central figure of the Beat Generation, McClure collaborated with Wallace Berman and Bruce Conner and was later associated with San Francisco's psychedelic counterculture. Originally self-published in 1964 and long out of print, Ghost Tantras is one of McClure's signature works, a book mostly written in "beast language." A mix of lyrical, guttural, and laryngeal sound, lion roars, and a touch of detonated dada, this is one of his best-known but least available books, a deep well from which decades of poetry have drawn. McClure's inspiration has always been the animal consciousness that still lives in mankind, and he has had a consistent message: "When a man does not admit that he is an animal, he is less than an animal." Ghost Tantras is his original and singular manifesto for a poetry that relies not on images and pictures, but on muscular, sensual, energetic sound. Michael McClure has received numerous awards and continues to reach new audiences through his poetry, plays, and performance.
Co-op available
Galleys available by request
National Print Campaign:
Send advance copies to the following publications: The Believer, Bookforum, Bomb, The Atlantic, The NY Times, LA Times, The Oregonion, The Miami Herald, Harper's, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Washington Post, Village Voice, Vanity Fair, AP, NY Mag, PaperMag, New York Review of Books, Boston Review, Bloomsbury Review, Brooklyn Rail, Poetry Flash, Poets and Writers, Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, Kenyon Review, The New Yorker.
Regional interest: SF Chronicle, SF Bay Guardian, SF Weekly, East Bay Express, 7x7, San Francisco Magazine, Bay Citizen/NY Times Bay Area
Beat Generation: Beat Scene and others
Spirituality: Shambhala Sun and others
Men's magazines: Men's Journal, GQ, Esquire, among others
Trades: Publisher's Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal
National TV & Radio Campaign:
Send advance copies to the producers and hosts of the following programs/stations: KQED Forum, KALW Your Call, KPFA Cover to Cover, WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show
Online & Social Media Campaign:
Boing Boing, Reality Sandwich, Rumpus, BOMB, Constant Critic, Conversational Reading, Poetry Daily, thepoetry.com, Identity Theory, NYer's Book Bench, Bookslut, and Shelf Awareness, Literary Kicks, Beat Review, Dharma Beat, Kerouac Project, Daily Beat, ThirdMindBooks, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Wikipedia.
Promote on social media:
City Lights has more than 16,700 Facebook followers & over 26,000 Twitter followers.
McClure has an active, current web site at http://www.michael-mcclure.com/
About the Author
Michael McClure is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving from Kansas to San Francisco as a young man, he was one of the five poets who participated in the legendary 1955 Six Gallery reading that featured the public debut of Allen Ginsberg's landmark poem Howl. McClure remains a key figure of the Beat Generation and is immortalized as Pat McLear in Jack Kerouac's novel Big Sur. A central figure in the Beat Movement and the San Francisco Renaissance, his poetry is heavily infused with an awareness of nature, especially in the animal consciousness that often lies dormant in mankind. He has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Obie Award for Best Play, an NEA grant, the Alfred Jarry Award and a Rockefeller grant for playwriting. McClure is still active as a poet, essayist and playwright and lives with his second wife, Amy, in the San Francisco Bay Area. McClure continues to reach new audiences through his poetry, plays, and performance.
Reviews
"These poems are intense, serious, hilarious, beautiful. The 'beast language' is intended to appeal to the animal inside every human ... For McClure, language is something entirely different than simple words and syntax. He pushes language to many limits, most of them definitive. Words here become sounds, writing becomes speech; what is so foundationally cultural-language is imagined and acted upon as natural. If nothing else, this makes for some bravely original and compelling poetry, and McClure is widely recognized today as a revolutionary poet because of his atypical attitudes toward language."--Housten Donham, HTMLGiant. "It's time for books with brains... The famously lyrical (and out-of-print) Ghost Tantras by Beat poet Michael McClure is coming back to life."--Allison McCarthy, 7x7 Magazine "Michael McClure is a Bay Area legend, a poet who participated in the Six Gallery reading that featured the public debut of Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl.' In 1964, he self-published 'Ghost Tantras,' written in a mix of muscular free verse, sensual lyricism and an elemental 'beast language' that includes roars, growls and other preverbal sounds. Now, 50 years after it first appeared, City Lights has reissued the book; 'Ghost Tantras' remains an essential volume for Beat Generation aficionados."--Georgia Rowe, San Jose Mercury News "Michael McClure's 'Ghost Tantras,' is also wonderfully welcome. City Lights Books has reprinted this slim volume by a Beat stalwart who never gets stale, has avoided with careful, exuberant wisdom the cannibalization of his comrades' memories, and is fearless ... "--Barbara Berman, The Rumpus
Book Information
ISBN 9780872866270
Author Michael McClure
Format Paperback
Page Count 120
Imprint City Lights Books
Publisher City Lights Books
Weight(grams) 141g
Send advance copies to the following publications: The Believer, Bookforum, Bomb, The Atlantic, The NY Times, LA Times, The Oregonion, The Miami Herald, Harper's, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Washington Post, Village Voice, Vanity Fair, AP, NY Mag, PaperMag, New York Review of Books, Boston Review, Bloomsbury Review, Brooklyn Rail, Poetry Flash, Poets and Writers, Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, Kenyon Review, The New Yorker.
Regional interest: SF Chronicle, SF Bay Guardian, SF Weekly, East Bay Express, 7x7, San Francisco Magazine, Bay Citizen/NY Times Bay Area
Beat Generation: Beat Scene and others
Spirituality: Shambhala Sun and others
Men's magazines: Men's Journal, GQ, Esquire, among others
Trades: Publisher's Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal
Send advance copies to the producers and hosts of the following programs/stations: KQED Forum, KALW Your Call, KPFA Cover to Cover, WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show
Boing Boing, Reality Sandwich, Rumpus, BOMB, Constant Critic, Conversational Reading, Poetry Daily, thepoetry.com, Identity Theory, NYer's Book Bench, Bookslut, and Shelf Awareness, Literary Kicks, Beat Review, Dharma Beat, Kerouac Project, Daily Beat, ThirdMindBooks, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Wikipedia.
Promote on social media:
City Lights has more than 16,700 Facebook followers & over 26,000 Twitter followers.
McClure has an active, current web site at http://www.michael-mcclure.com/
About the Author
Michael McClure is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving from Kansas to San Francisco as a young man, he was one of the five poets who participated in the legendary 1955 Six Gallery reading that featured the public debut of Allen Ginsberg's landmark poem Howl. McClure remains a key figure of the Beat Generation and is immortalized as Pat McLear in Jack Kerouac's novel Big Sur. A central figure in the Beat Movement and the San Francisco Renaissance, his poetry is heavily infused with an awareness of nature, especially in the animal consciousness that often lies dormant in mankind. He has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Obie Award for Best Play, an NEA grant, the Alfred Jarry Award and a Rockefeller grant for playwriting. McClure is still active as a poet, essayist and playwright and lives with his second wife, Amy, in the San Francisco Bay Area. McClure continues to reach new audiences through his poetry, plays, and performance.
Reviews
"These poems are intense, serious, hilarious, beautiful. The 'beast language' is intended to appeal to the animal inside every human ... For McClure, language is something entirely different than simple words and syntax. He pushes language to many limits, most of them definitive. Words here become sounds, writing becomes speech; what is so foundationally cultural-language is imagined and acted upon as natural. If nothing else, this makes for some bravely original and compelling poetry, and McClure is widely recognized today as a revolutionary poet because of his atypical attitudes toward language."--Housten Donham, HTMLGiant. "It's time for books with brains... The famously lyrical (and out-of-print) Ghost Tantras by Beat poet Michael McClure is coming back to life."--Allison McCarthy, 7x7 Magazine "Michael McClure is a Bay Area legend, a poet who participated in the Six Gallery reading that featured the public debut of Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl.' In 1964, he self-published 'Ghost Tantras,' written in a mix of muscular free verse, sensual lyricism and an elemental 'beast language' that includes roars, growls and other preverbal sounds. Now, 50 years after it first appeared, City Lights has reissued the book; 'Ghost Tantras' remains an essential volume for Beat Generation aficionados."--Georgia Rowe, San Jose Mercury News "Michael McClure's 'Ghost Tantras,' is also wonderfully welcome. City Lights Books has reprinted this slim volume by a Beat stalwart who never gets stale, has avoided with careful, exuberant wisdom the cannibalization of his comrades' memories, and is fearless ... "--Barbara Berman, The Rumpus
Book Information
ISBN 9780872866270
Author Michael McClure
Format Paperback
Page Count 120
Imprint City Lights Books
Publisher City Lights Books
Weight(grams) 141g
