Touching the Edge [Paperback]

Michael McClure (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 6, 1999

     Innovative Beat poet Michael McClure has written a book of poems unlike any of his others. These dharma devotions are fruits of his Buddhist mediation practice. Like bold calligraphy moving vertically down a white scroll, they surprise the eye and mind, awakening us to a heightened sense of everyday things.

Editorial Reviews

Review

     Beat poet McClure and Whalen, along with Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, caused a great seismic shift in literature with their fresh and liberated approaches to language and focus on the chimerical workings of the mind. Their meditative perspectives led not only to revolutionary poetry but to sustained and beautifully articulated Buddhist practices. In his new collection, McClure presents a series of dharma devotions — lithely observant and gently philosophical musings — that flow down the center of elongated pages like brooks, tree trunks, reeds, or the brush strokes of calligraphy. As the reader's eyes slide happily down these wavy word columns, joyful images of the natural world — hummingbirds and raccoons, honeysuckles and waterfalls, fog and stone — open like flowers in a the verdant field of McClure's sweetly bemused commentary on our wayward nature. Delicate as his poems are, they nevertheless pack a punch, powered by the tension of dualities and charged with agile leaps of thought. — Donna Seaman, Booklist, March 15, 1999

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Shambhala; 1st edition (April 6, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570624402
• ISBN-13: 978-1570624407
• Product Dimensions: 4.5 x 0.4 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,005,134 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MIND MANIFESTING, August 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Touching the Edge (Paperback)

Poetry exists to be read aloud ~ like music, to be played, embodied. Michael McClure's poetry is unmistakable in its look as well as its vision. Roughly centered, it reads as the body language of a living organism ~ muscular, as well as mental. Not only are sentences sometimes chopped. Like this. But also lines can break after just one word; some even letter by letter. The net effect is a welcome <I>slowdown</I> of mind awake to the richness of life. The bigness of minute particulars, as well as the infinite; being; space; etc.

One of the original Beats, McClure is a hip prodigy reaching maturity gracefully, a rare thing. His recent Buddhist practice is like the capstone of a lifetime's overarching concerns. Marrying mysticism and biology, his wok has always been typified by an expressionist vitalism. Now it gains a new, genuine, metaphysical drama as it juxtaposes non-action to verbal "action painting." The image and the imageless. The miraculous and the everyday. Cosmic and domestic. Nondualism.

TOUCHING THE EDGE is a book-length poem, recording a home-video epic of the process of practice. The effect of reading it (aloud) is as tantric as Francesco Clemente's watercolors, as psychedelic ("mind-manifesting") as the Flower Garland Sutra. Informed by the Soto Zen tradition of sitting just to sit, his writing-just-to-write traces the shape of mind in motion (and at stillness) with a wealth of keen perception along the way. Apples blush. Cats perform Noh drama under an apple tree. A poet dreams of lions and Herakles. And rice roars.

This craft ~ a seemingly artless art ~ can carry us across.

5.0 out of 5 stars A dance along the path from Beat to Buddhist., September 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Touching the Edge (Paperback)

Few reviews notice the delicious subtext -- a biography of the poet's calico kitten growing to cathood through the year of zazen these poems reflect, a constant reminder of animal Buddha-nature. I'm reminded of Kerouac's line about "the little cat crying for meat, himself a little meat soul..." As for the main theme, _Booklist- gets it right:

"Beat poets McClure and [others] caused a great seismic shift in literature with their fresh and liberated approaches to language and focus on the chimerical workings of the mind. Their meditative perspectives led not only to revolutionary poetry but to sustained and beautifully articulated Buddhist practices. In his new collection, McClure presents a series of dharma devotions -- lithely observant and gently philosophical musings -- that flow down the center of elongated pages like brooks, tree trunks, reeds, or the brush strokes of calligraphy. As the reader's eyes slide happily down these wavy word columns, joyful images of the natural world -- hummingbirds and raccoons, honeysuckles and waterfalls, fog and stone -- open like flowers in the verdant field of McClure's sweetly bemused commentary on our wayward nature. Delicate as his poems are, they nevertheless pack a punch, powered by the tension of dualities and charged with agile leaps of thought."

_Touching the Edge_ does a beautiful job of reminding today's readers why and how Buddhism spoke to the original Beat generation -- and continues to speak to its heirs.