A year ago today, a weary LitKicks staff headed gratefully off to sleep after completing an exercise in literary collaboration and sleeplessness we called the 24 Hour Poetry Party. We followed this by shutting the site down for about a month and a half, before gradually reinventing it in the shape it wears now.
A year later, I still think that was some good poem we all wrote on that bleary crazy afternoon, night and morning. I also feel like calling attention to some of the contributed works that flashed by during this marathon. The passage of time has made me only fonder of one particular piece, an extended poem by Michael McClure, which made its world debut during our versifying bacchanal.
I think this poem is worth a return visit. It still looks exactly like it looked when we put it up one year ago, with that excellent waterfall photograph by Panta Rhei.
I hope this poem, and this page, will belong to the ages: Mysteriosos by Michael McClure
5 Responses
oh manMysteriosos really does
oh man
Mysteriosos really does stand up well, doesn’t it? I liked it the first time I read it, but the excitement of writing for the 24 hour poem distracted me somewhat; now that I sit back and absorb this poem by McClure, it really knocks me out! Very primal and beautiful.
I rememberAs the 24-hour jam
I remember
As the 24-hour jam wound down Saturday morning, my son came downstairs and asked “Is that poetry crap finished yet?” Something about stealing the computer, I think. I showed him the McClure poems, hoping good poetry would pique his curiosity. Unfortunately, all it elicitied from his (then) 16-year old cocksure mind was “Ewww…did you write that crap?”
Good crap; I remember it.
I Remember…I remember this
I Remember…
I remember this one –“Mysteriosos…”, by Michael McClure. I appreciated having portions of my submissions included along with a poem of this stature in ACTION POETRY, within the “24 Hour Poem”.
I have a volume of Michael McClure’s called SEPTEMBER BLACKBERRIES, published in 1974 by New Directions. A poem called “We” toward the end of the book has a style which reminds me of this new poem by Michael. Gallery Six continues on in poems such as these.
You should have said, “Yes.
You should have said, “Yes. Yes, I did.”
You know what’s funny?
You know what’s funny? Sometimes, after seeing so many pictures of the beats & hippies, and reading so much about them, I forget how really good they were and why they were popular in the first place.