Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Michael McClure’s "Ode" is a rhapsodic declaration of presence, love, and the transformative power of the instant. As in much of his work, McClure rejects conventional structures of perception and embraces an ecstatic immediacy, where time collapses and experience becomes pure sensation. The poem pulses with an urgent, bodily awareness, merging physicality with vision, love with venom, and fear with a call for liberation. It embodies the Beat and post-Beat ethos of spontaneous, radical openness—where poetry is not a mere articulation of thought but a state of being, a vehicle for living within the heightened reality of the now.

From the opening line, McClure makes clear that he is engaging with something primal: "The Love and VISION of the Instant are the venom we coil our tiny bodies on." This establishes a paradox—love and vision are juxtaposed with venom, suggesting that heightened perception is both intoxicating and dangerous. The image of coiling tiny bodies on this venom evokes a snake-like, coiled energy, ready to strike but also to embrace. This recalls McClure’s frequent fascination with animals, particularly predatory ones, as symbols of both raw instinct and ecstatic enlightenment. The Instant, capitalized for emphasis, is not merely a passing moment but a grand, uncontainable force, the very lamp by which existence throws its shadow.

McClure’s next declaration—"I am this sensual! I AM THIS SIZE!! I AM THIS SIZE AND THERE IS NO OTHER AS WE LIE COILED in the black lily of our lives."—brims with self-affirmation. His repetition of size is significant; it asserts that the scope of being is not determined by external forces but by one’s own perception and declaration. The black lily suggests both beauty and a dark, almost funerary sensuality—love, life, and death intertwined. The phrasing makes it clear that McClure does not view this coiled existence as constraining, but as an embrace of a deeper truth.

The instant, which has already been established as something illuminating, is further exalted: "The instant is the giant lamp we throw our shadows by." This positions the moment not as fleeting, but as something monumental—casting shadows, shaping perception. The moment, then, is not something to be feared as ephemeral but something to be lived in fully. His following line—"I love you honeyed venom."—returns to the paradox of beauty and danger. This is not a safe, sweet love; it is intoxicating, sharp, alive. Love, for McClure, is not about comfort—it is about confrontation with the visceral.

His next assertion, "The instant is without thorn and I cannot be hung on it the instant is not rose but lily and we may be fairy creatures HUGER THAN THE STARS!!!"—pushes further into his vision of a boundless, unhindered existence. The traditional metaphor of the thorny rose, often used to signify love’s pain, is rejected in favor of the lily, a symbol of purity and transformation. McClure suggests that, in this liberated moment, beings are not bound by pain but free to expand into something larger than life, huger than the stars. The exaggeration and capitalization amplify this sense of limitless transcendence.

Then comes a rupture, an explosion of frustration and rebellion: "BREAK DOWN THE STINKING SWEAT OF FEAR that rises in my nose like flames!" This moment interrupts the reverie, exposing the lurking presence of fear—something stinking, sweating, visceral. Fear, for McClure, is a bodily thing, rising up like fire, threatening to consume the purity of the instant. His demand to break it down is not merely a call for personal courage but an invocation for transformation, a refusal to allow fear to dictate experience.

McClure follows this with a rejection of ugly plain speech, distinguishing between raw experience and the dull, rationalized articulation of it. He seeks instead "the soft warmth of eternal imagination and delicate beauty." This is a vital statement—he does not seek realism, does not want to reduce experience to mere explanation. Instead, he desires imagination and beauty as eternal forces, shaping existence. His poetics align with the Romantic tradition here, rejecting sterile intellectualism in favor of a lived, felt aestheticism.

The final lines before the poem breaks off—"Rise to me from your blossom instant make new capitals and smash the old. Ignore the falsity and"—suggest a revolutionary impulse. The instant is not just a fleeting awareness but a source of renewal, something capable of building new structures and demolishing outdated ones. This could be read politically, spiritually, or poetically—McClure often blurred the lines between these realms. The capitals to be remade could symbolize institutions, ideologies, or even modes of thought that no longer serve humanity. The poem does not end with resolution but with momentum, urging the reader toward something beyond what has already been named.

Ultimately, "Ode" encapsulates McClure’s ecstatic vision of poetry as a force of transformation, one that embraces sensation, presence, and the refusal to be bound by fear or convention. It is a manifesto of being, a poem that does not just describe experience but enacts it. McClure does not merely write about the instant—he hurls himself into it, demanding that we do the same.

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