Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Michael McClure’s "Mad Sonnet 1" is a fervent, ecstatic explosion of love, awe, and defiance. The poem, though labeled a sonnet, does not adhere to the strict formal constraints of traditional sonnet structure, instead embodying a wild, open-ended energy characteristic of McClure’s Mad Sonnets sequence. It is less a structured meditation than a raw, immediate burst of feeling—mixing sensuality, spirituality, and poetic intensity. The poem oscillates between surrender and resistance, reverence and defiance, beauty and agony, encapsulating the contradictions inherent in deep passion.

The opening lines, "THE PLUMES OF LOVE ARE BLACK! THE PLUMES OF LOVE ARE BLACK AND DELICATE!", establish an immediate sense of tension. Plumes evoke an image of feathers—luxurious, ornamental, perhaps even funereal—while black suggests both elegance and mourning. Love, in this formulation, is not purely luminous but shadowed, touched by darkness, by the weight of intensity and experience. The exclamatory repetition and capitalization heighten the urgency of this declaration, making love feel like something primal, almost dangerous.

McClure then describes the plumes as having a peacock-like iridescence—"moron-eyed plumes of a peacock with violetshine and yellow on shadowy black." This transforms the darkness of love into something multi-dimensional, radiant even in its heaviness. The peacock is traditionally associated with beauty, pride, and resurrection, hinting that love in this poem is not just a burden but something that glimmers with mystery. Yet, its splendor is unsettling, bordering on madness. The moron-eyed descriptor suggests something both hypnotic and uncomprehending, as if the beauty of love is so vast that it dumbfounds.

The image of plumes spraying from the body of the Beloved makes love feel visceral, a force that emanates uncontrollably. There is an almost ritualistic, sacred tone here, as if love is something being physically expelled into the world—an offering, or even a wound. McClure’s fascination with organic, bodily processes infuses the language with a sense of physicality, making love not just an idea but a tangible, living force.

Then comes a sharp rupture: "AND I DO NOT WANT BLACK PLUMES OR AGONY . . . AND I DO NOT SURRENDER." This sudden rejection of love’s darkness suggests an internal struggle. The poet acknowledges love’s beauty, but also its pain, and he refuses to submit to it entirely. Instead, he seeks "noble combat!!", positioning love as something to be engaged with consciously rather than something that simply happens to him. The exclamation marks and declarative tone reinforce the idea that this is not passive devotion but an active, almost knightly pursuit.

His assertion—"to give pure Love as best I can with opened heart"—demonstrates a desire to transcend the agony of love by purifying it, by making it something noble and untainted. This is not a love that destroys or consumes; it is a love that seeks to be offered, an act of will and devotion rather than compulsion.

The direct address to Love marks a turning point: "LOVE!! I have not seen you before and you’re more beautiful than a plume!" This shifts the focus from love as an abstract force to love as a presence—something embodied, something newly discovered. The speaker’s wonderment suggests that despite all prior experiences, this particular moment of love is unprecedented, beyond even his poetic imagination.

The lines that follow—"Stately, striding in Space and warm . . . ( Your human breasts! )"—reveal McClure’s blend of cosmic imagery and intimate sensuality. Love is stately, grand, even celestial (striding in Space), yet also deeply human, embodied in the form of a lover. The parenthetical phrase—"( Your human breasts! )"—is a moment of raw erotic immediacy, grounding the poem’s cosmic aspirations in physical reality.

The crescendo of the poem arrives with a near-messianic proclamation: "LET ME MAKE YOUR SMILE AND HEARTSHAPED FACE IMMORTAL – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –" The extended dashes create an elongated pause, stretching out the moment as if the very act of speaking it is an attempt at immortality. McClure places love in the realm of the eternal—something that can be enshrined in poetry, preserved beyond time.

The final lines—"YOUR GRAY EYES ARE WHAT I FINALLY COME TO WITH MY BROWN! AND YOUR HIGH CHEEKS, and your hair rough for a woman’s — like a lamb."—return to the beloved as an individual rather than an abstraction. The contrast of gray eyes and brown creates a sense of convergence, two different elements meeting in a moment of unity. The description of rough hair, like a lamb’s introduces a sense of innocence or rawness, as if the beloved is not an idealized, perfect figure but someone real, textured, alive.

The closing phrase—"And the walking Virtue that you are!"—cements the lover as more than just a source of beauty. She is Virtue itself, something that walks, that exists in action, in movement. This suggests that love, for McClure, is not just a passive aesthetic experience but something embodied, something that is lived rather than merely admired.

"Mad Sonnet 1" is a fusion of ecstasy and struggle, reverence and defiance. McClure does not merely describe love; he wrestles with it, engages it as something alive, something luminous yet shadowed. His exaltation of the beloved is both cosmic and physical, blending celestial imagery with intimate, bodily details. The poem captures the intensity of love as both revelation and battle, something that expands beyond the individual yet remains deeply personal. It is love as madness, as vision, as defiance—an ode not to submission, but to engagement, to the living force of passion.

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