David Stephen Calonne 
Conversations with Michael McClure [PDF ebook] 

Conversations with Michael Mc Clure features twenty interviews from 1969 to 2015 that chronicle the capacious scope of Mc Clure’s creativity. Mc Clure (1932-2020) is notable not only for his considerable achievements as a poet and prose writer of the Beat Generation, but also for the many collaborative connections he forged over seven decades. From the 1950s to his death, Mc Clure worked with an astonishing range of important figures in the worlds of painting, filmmaking, music, and science. Mc Clure counted among his friends and acquaintances Bruce Conner, Harold Pinter, Amiri Baraka, Richard Brautigan, Wallace Berman, George Herms, Lawrence Jordan, Dennis Hopper, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Sterling Bunnell, Francis Crick, Gary Snyder, Francesco Clemente, and Diane di Prima.During his early years in San Francisco, Mc Clure attended Kenneth Rexroth’s literary evenings and formed significant lifelong friendships. Among those friends were poets Philip Lamantia and Robert Duncan, who became a mentor to Mc Clure. He also learned much from Charles Olson and adopted several features of Olson’s concept of "Projective Verse" in his own work. Mc Clure’s exchange of letters with experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage lasted for four decades. During his illustrious career, Mc Clure published fourteen books of poetry, eight books of plays, and four collections of essays. Conversations with Michael Mc Clure reveals the many contributions of this central personality in the evolution of the American counterculture.