Michael McClure died Monday, May 4, 2020, at his home in the Oakland hills. The San Francisco Chronicle was quick with an obituary that started:

Michael McClure, the young poet recruited to put together the famed Six Gallery readings in 1955 that launched the San Francisco Renaissance and the legend of the Beats, died Monday, May 4, at his home in the Oakland hills. He was 87.

McClure died from the lingering effects of a stroke he suffered in spring 2019, Garrett Caples, a close friend and editor at City Lights Publishers, told The Chronicle the day after McClure’s death. READ MORE

I note it on this blog as he was opened in Subud and wrote to me that an essay of his entitled “Reason” was “Reason with a kiss of Subud:”

McClure did not become a regular practitioner of Latihan, but did write about the experience with great clarity. That could have been a lot sharper had he continued with the Latihan and studied the model of the hierarchy of Life Forces, but alas, he did not stay in Subud and found a spiritual home in Zazen instead, along with an appreciation for the Avatamsaka Sutra of Hua-yen Buddhism. His poetry, plays and essays are a remarkable achievement in North American letters and will no doubt grow more luminous in his posthumous existence and I believe he was better able to surrender given his time, however short, in Subud. It also again demonstrates the unique and vibrant San Francisco cultural and spiritual scene in the late 50s and early 60s.

For more on one of Michael McClure’s most important poems, see this essay:

https://paulenelson.com/organic-poetry/inside-dolphin-skull/

Rest In Power Rebel Lion.