Simple Eyes and Other Poems

Perhaps best known for his recitation of the prologue to the Canterbury Tales in Martin Scorsese's film The Last Waltz , McClure has written more than 30 books--novels, plays, poetry, essays. Many of the poems in Simple Eyes were composed for spoken performances, in which the writer collaborates with the pianist Ray Manzarek of the Doors. The poems strive for an avant-garde freshness, but are rooted in the spiritual and visionary excesses of the '60s. In his introduction, McClure explains that his poetry ``is not written in free verse but in a poetics that Charles Olson called projective verse. . . . I write with a breath line and I listen to the syllable as it appears in my voice or on the tip of my pen or on my screen or on my field of energies.'' In practice, this means the poems--which form a sort of spiritual diary--often have lines all in capital letters and words spelled vertically down the page, making them look, though not sound, like work by e.e. cummings. McClure draws his subjects from travel, from the work of other poets (e.g. Robert Creeley), and pop art. At the center of the volume is a long sequence of poems, ``Fields,'' a ``spiritual autobiography,'' in which each field, or poem, presents an event of consciousness. It begins: ``THESE ARE MY FINE SWEET POEMS!! Immortal as butterfly wings / and the song that the eagle sings as he screams / diving!'' And ends: ``Everything is there /that touched and made me.'' For those who prefer the aural and gestural aspects of poetry to more traditional literary strategies, this book will certainly outlast a butterfly's wing or an eagle's song. (May)