Page 3 – Of Indigo and Saffron – Michael McClure
As a poet, I have seen that this is a common challenge facing poets and the art of poetry today; great lines like the above are buried on page 102 of a collection that begins with lines like these:
EACH BON MOT HAS COST ME A PURSE OF GOLD.
ERASE THE LINES OF THE NIGHT FROM THE COUCH OF THE
DAY.
COOL TURQUOISE CRYSTAL FEATHER -WOLF PROTON GYRE.
SCROLLED FERN SHADOW SPORE -BREAST SALT MOON.
Wheel of the galaxy turning in tumbleweed.
Faces of antelope staring from ice cream.
-“1”(13)
By the end of the first seven lines of this collection, most readers have put the book back on the shelf and wandered toward Whitman or Billy Collins or away from the poetry aisle altogether. Nothing against Whitman or Collins, but there is a lot inside Of Indigo and Saffron that could really resonate with contemporary readers. If they can wade through the drug-induced, random-word-list, semi-nonsensical pages.
There is an interesting, visible evolution that seems to happen here, one that would not be as obvious if not for Scalapino’s diligent selection of poems. Though the collection begins with Peyote-infused ramblings of a twenty-something hipster, it moves quickly through angst, awareness, enlightenment, activism, and eventually reflection. The poems in his new section, Swirls in Asphalt, are lucid and luminous, without losing the soul of the rebel lion. “I LOVE SPEAKING/ through the monkey’s/ mouth./ But/ not/ to/ you./ You are real.”(208) One gets the sense that McClure is acknowledging the surreal nature of his early poetry, and that there are times when sense is perhaps more sensible.
One also gets the sense that McClure has no regrets. Perhaps a credit to his experiences in Buddhist spirituality, the newer poems in Of Indigo and Saffron seem to move with a slow intentionality that lacked in his earlier work. “Don’t be sentimental/ about samsara/ especially autumn”(209) he writes in a poem read at a friend’s Zen Buddhist ordination. Samsara is the Buddhist concept of the physical cycle of mortality, for which there is certainly no sentimentality in Michael McClure; only many years of careful observation, at times extensive participation, and a defiantly artful pen.
C. Christopher Smith is the founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books. He is also author of a number of books, including most recently How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church (Brazos Press, 2019). Connect with him online at: C-Christopher-Smith.com
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I would say that most poetry is best when heard read aloud. There is something to the intonational cadence of the human voice that amplifies punctuation.