Empty Mirror

a literary magazine

  • About
    • About Empty Mirror
    • Get in Touch
    • Support EM
    • Colophon
  • Submit
  • Contributors
  • Essays
  • On Literature
  • Reviews
  • Poetry
  • Art
  • Interviews
  • Beat
    • Beat Generation
    • Ted Joans Lives!
  • +
    • Fiction
    • Music & Film
    • News
    • On Writing
    • Book Collecting

In Memoriam: Bruce Conner, 1933-2008

Michael McClure

In Memoriam: Bruce Conner, 1933-2008

THE ARTIST

for Bruce Conner

THE ARTIST has faces that are nude ladies and feathers.
Women pose in the visage of the whirlpool
           raising bare arms and arching bare thighs.
Tentacles of squid sway down among pinions
of African eagles from the artist's beret
and they tangle white hair.
   In the blackness of his face, spider webs and lichens,
   are matted together making a waterfall that splashes
   down to the chin.
His head tilts down, staring into the vision.
The glow of his consciousness
                              is an aureole.

    --A HUGE WHOLE THOUGHT in all of its myriadness
                         is what he grasps for.
His black velvet beret is a dome of power
                         in the haunted light of the room.

IT IS ALL OUT THERE.
EVERYTHING IS OUT THERE!
              It is superlatively clear.
It will all come together in connected fragments
--oceanic!--floating--everywhere
               in the nineteen directions.
He sees it clearly--it is all so endless,
so sensory.

His satin neckband is twisted and knotted
with demon emanations.
His gentle old jacket is awash
with mystic
wrinklings.

The jewel that he wears is a star cluster
carved out of coal.

Horseback rides are engraved in the gold frame,
there are childhood memories of fields of grass
               with a mouth on each blade
telling stories
of the origins of pure matter and nothingness.
Foxes circle around it all
and they bark
in honor
of the softness of mulberries.
— Michael McClure
Share on TwitterShare on Facebook

Michael McClure

Michael McClure (October 20, 1932-May 4, 2020) was a poet, playwright, novelist, and essayist, who is closely associated with the Beat Generation, the San Francisco Renaissance, and the 1960s counterculture. He often performed his poetry with Ray Manzarek and The Big Mix and gave poetry readings internationally. His most recent publication is Of Indigo and Saffron: New and Selected Poems. You an visit his website at www.michael-mcclure.com.

Author: Michael McClure Tags: art, Beat Generation, Larry Keenan, Michael McClure, photography, poetry, tribute Category: Beat Generation, Visual Art and Visual Poetry July 8, 2008

You might also like:

Scraps 2 (detail) by Fabio Sassi
Scraps by Fabio Sassi
ancient glass afternoon
Three poems by Ann Eleven
actual size collage (detail) - Steve Dalachinsky
Five poems and four collages by Steve Dalachinsky
Poems by Kenneth Pobo

DONATE TO BLACK LIVES MATTER

BLACK LIVES MATTER

The EM newsletter

Receive fresh poetry, reviews, essays, art, and literary news every Wednesday!

R.I.P. Michael McClure 1932-2020

Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

Subscribe Submissions Support

Recent features

  • My Father’s Map
  • On Waiting
  • Seeing Las Meninas in Madrid, 1994
  • Visual poems from 23 Bodhisattvas by Chris Stephenson
  • Historical Punctum: Reading Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia and Native Guard Through the Lens of Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida
  • Panic In The Rear-View Mirror: Exploring The Work of Richard Siken and Ann Gale
  • “Art has side effects,” I said.

Books

Biblio
© 2000–2021 D. Enck / Empty Mirror.
Copyright of all content remains with its authors.
Privacy Policy · Privacy Tools · FTC disclosures