Garrett Caples News Today

Book Launch for Mule Kick Blues: And Last Poems, published by City Lights. The last book by the late Beat Generation legend Michael McClure with Anne Waldman and Eileen Myles and featuring Garrett Caples. The final book of poems from a Beat Generation legend, Mule Kick Blues finds McClure restlessly innovating until the end. Mule Kick Blues is the final book of poems by Beat Generation legend Michael McClure. A powerful collection of new work written during the last years of McClures life, Mule...

Kevin Canfield April 12, 2021 “Mule Kick Blues” by Michael McClure We should never assume that a poet’s words are autobiographical, but it seems clear that Michael McClure’s irreverent verse about mortality came from a deeply personal place. “TO GROW OLD IS A JOY PRECEDING THE BIG ONE,” McClure, the famed Bay Area writer who was 87 when he died in May, writes in this evocative collection of “last poems.” “Death is a dark chocolate cake,/ sweet, and filled with dee...

Untitled, 1959. Art by Eugene Von Bruenchenhein. Used by permission of Rich Shapero. © Rich Shapero. The Combustion Cycle (Roof Books, 2021), by Will Alexander, gathers three long poems written over two decades: “Concerning the Henbane Bird,” “On Solar Physiology,” and “The Ganges.” At more than 600 pages, the book calls attention to one of the great originals of contemporary US poetry, and at the same time it’s a record of something else—somethi...