Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Michael McClure’s "Dark Brown Eyes of Seals" is a visceral, sensuous meditation on memory, sexuality, and the mysterious forces that shape human consciousness. The poem, like much of McClure’s work, fuses the organic with the metaphysical, suggesting that the body and spirit are not separate entities but part of a constantly evolving, deeply interconnected natural order. His language is charged with bodily immediacy and dreamlike abstraction, creating a tension between the primal and the transcendent.

The opening lines introduce a physicality that is both violent and erotic: "THE CRUNCH OF GUILT WITHIN THE NECK BITES THE MUSCLES OF THE JAW at memory’s site of what is beautiful of sexuality and bliss." The crunch of guilt suggests a bodily reaction to a past event, an involuntary tightening of muscles in response to memory. This is not just a psychological experience; it is somatic, imprinted in the body. The duality of guilt and bliss immediately establishes the poem’s central theme—the way pleasure and remorse can intertwine, how desire is both liberating and haunting.

McClure follows this with an assertion that blurs the boundaries of self and perception: "This takes the silent, active shapes of secrets deep within — and then we do not know what is out or here or in." Memory becomes fluid, shifting between interior and exterior, between past and present. The secrets deep within are both personal and universal, hidden forces that shape identity but resist clear articulation. This destabilization of space and time reflects McClure’s interest in consciousness as something nonlinear, something closer to dream logic than rational sequence.

The poem then turns to an image of memory itself as an infant’s phantasm, something innocent yet ghostly, fragile but persistent. McClure presents two possible manifestations of memory—a strangling or a luscious kiss, evoking the idea that love, intimacy, and past experiences can be both suffocating and intoxicating. The phrase dripping chocolate and gentle hurricanes of milky arms and breasts deepens this sensual dichotomy, merging sweetness and chaos, nourishment and turbulence. McClure’s use of food imagery (dripping chocolate, milky arms) reinforces the idea of desire as something both primal and deeply embodied, while the reference to hurricanes suggests the uncontrollable nature of human passion.

As the poem progresses, it moves toward an even more abstract, organic vision of selfhood: "The unknown pseudopods entwine to make our spirits into streaming jewels just as each higher cell has become a pulsing pirate chest." The pseudopods—amorphous, cellular extensions—suggest transformation and growth, reinforcing the idea that identity is fluid and constantly reshaping itself. This biological imagery aligns with McClure’s overarching philosophy of biology as politics, the idea that life itself, at a molecular level, determines our experience. The pulsing pirate chest transforms the body into a vessel of treasure, of mystery and adventure, implying that the essence of being is an ongoing, organic discovery.

The notion of multiplicity continues: "wherein we are sleeping wolves and singing angel fools and all this coils and intercoils and we stand on tiptoe to bend and see our heels." This suggests that within each person exists both the predator (wolves) and the divine (angel fools), the instinctual and the visionary. The act of standing on tiptoe to bend and see our heels is an image of self-exploration, an effort to look at one’s origins, to see what is usually hidden from view. It captures the yearning for self-awareness and the difficulty of grasping the full nature of our existence.

McClure brings the poem to a grand, cosmic scale in the closing lines: "The air we breathe with deepening breath is alive with birth and death. We’re held by the living arms of gods, and moving through the summer waves we’re watched by dark brown eyes of seals." The idea that the air itself contains birth and death reinforces the interconnectedness of all things—every breath is part of a continuous cycle of creation and dissolution. The living arms of gods suggests a force beyond human comprehension, one that embraces rather than judges. Finally, the dark brown eyes of seals serve as both a literal and symbolic presence. Seals, creatures that inhabit the threshold between land and sea, become silent, watchful figures, their gaze containing an ancient wisdom. They are the witnesses to human movement, to the natural rhythms of life that persist beyond individual experience.

"Dark Brown Eyes of Seals" encapsulates McClure’s fascination with the visceral and the cosmic, the erotic and the spiritual, the cellular and the celestial. The poem pulses with raw energy, its language undulating between physical immediacy and metaphysical wonder. It speaks to the inescapable tension of human existence—between memory and presence, guilt and bliss, animal instinct and divine aspiration. In its final image, McClure leaves us with the haunting presence of the seals, their unblinking eyes reflecting back not just the sea but the complexities of our own nature.

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