Michael McClure

Rod Phillips (Michigan State University)

Ed. by Nick Selby, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 1952
Died 2020

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Playwright / Dramatist
Poet

Resources

McClure's Works

Save to Bookshelf

The author of more than twenty volumes of poetry, over twenty plays, two novels, and three collections of essays, Michael McClure’s most powerful and persistent message is that humans must strive to regain their biological identity as mammals. Writing in what his friend Gary Snyder calls a “biological / wild / unconscious / fairytale / new / scientific / imagination form” (

The Real Work

124), McClure pushed his readers to reconsider their place in the world, to question and revolt against man-made political structures, and to reexamine their relationship to the rest of nature. “LET US THROW OUT THE WORD

MAN

!”, he urged, and seek in place of this limited role the “mammalian possibility” of “a larger place” in the world (

Meat Science Essays

79-80).

Michael McClure was

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2457 words

Citation: Phillips, Rod. "Michael McClure". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 May 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3031, accessed 21 November 2024.]