Michael McClure, Present at Beat Poetry’s Birth, Dies at 87

He took part in the storied San Francisco reading where Allen Ginsberg unveiled a version of “Howl.” He went on to have his own moments of fame and notoriety.

By Neil Genzlinger
May 6, 2020

Michael McClure, who at 22 helped usher in the Beat movement as part of a famed poetry reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco, then went on to a long and varied career as a poet, playwright, novelist and lyricist, died on Monday at his home in Oakland, Calif. He was 87.

His wife, Amy Evans McClure, said the cause was complications of a stroke he had last year.

Mr. McClure was one of the poetry readers at the Six Gallery, a former auto repair shop that had been turned into an art gallery, on Oct. 7, 1955, a date that Beatdom magazine, marking the 60th anniversary of the event, called “arguably one of the most important dates in American literature.”

To an audience of perhaps 150 people (the number varies in the tellings), Mr. McClure read a poem called “For the Death of 100 Whales,” said to have been inspired by a report that bored American soldiers stationed in Iceland had amused themselves by shooting a pod of whales. But he and the other readers — Philip Lamantia, Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen, with Kenneth Rexroth as M.C. — were overshadowed by the sixth man on the bill, Allen Ginsberg.

That night Mr. Ginsberg premiered an early version of “Howl,” the landmark poem (“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness”) that became the defining work of the Beat generation.

-snip-

Famed San Francisco Beat Poet Michael McClure Dies At Age 87

May 6, 2020 at 3:13 pm

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Michael McClure, one of the famed Beat poets of San Francisco whose career as a poet eclipsed many others in popular culture, has died. He was 87.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that McClure died Tuesday in Oakland, California, after suffering a stroke last year.

A then 22-year-old McClure helped organize the famous Six Gallery beat poetry reading on Oct. 7, 1955, and later read at the Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park that launched the Summer of Love in 1967 and at The Band’s “Last Waltz” concert at Winterland in 1976.

“Without the roar of McClure, there would have been no ’60s,” actor Dennis Hopper once said.

McClure would be credited as the co-writer to “Mercedes Benz,” the a cappella tune that Janis Joplin recorded three days before her death which would appear on her posthumously released album “Pearl.” McClure has been quoted as saying that royalties from that song would allow him to buy a home in the Oakland hills.

-snip-