Of Indigo and Saffron

Michael McClure is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. He has collaborated with prominent artists, poets, and musicians, including Allen Ginsberg, Jim Morrison, and Terry Riley. McClure's journalism has been featured in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The Los Angeles Times, and The San Francisco Chronicle, and he has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Obie Award. His books of poetry include Mysteriosos and Other Poems, Huge Dreams, and Rain Mirror. Leslie Scalapino (1944--2010) taught at Mills College in Oakland and at Bard College in New York State. Among her many books are It's go in horizontal: Selected Poems, 1974--2006 (UC Press); Day Ocean State of Star's Night: Poems and Writings, 1989 and 1999--2006, and Floats Horse-Floats or Horse-Flows.

"Like Philip Whalen, Charles Bukowski, and Jim Morrison (to whom one section is dedicated), McClure infuses ecstatic direct address and colloquial diction with an exquisite sensibility." Publishers Weekly "McClure's poetry seems as vital to the 21st century as it was to the 20th." Library Journal "A young reader can be inspired by McClure's radical questioning of the established social order at every turn... McClure, among all the Beat poets, is perhaps the softest, most tender, most yielding." San Francisco Chronicle