McClure _ Bianco

In Michael McClure’s Ghost Tantras, McClure creates a set of serial poems that focus on animalistic sounds. McClure’s poems focus on the distinction between humankind and beasts. With the focus on animalistic sounds, McClure focuses on the materiality of language. In society we’ve evolved language to be structured with limits, boundaries and rules. Instead of a focus on the meaning of text and language, we’ve become materialistic with language. McClure demonstrates the materiality of language with the interweaving of animalistic sounds with poetic lines. In the first poem, the poem begins with the repetition of  “Goor”. McClure creates a rhythmic pattern that crescendos and eventually diminuendos. The strict rhythmic pattern contrasts against the background of the convoluted text.  The rhythmic pattern itself focuses upon the repetition of specific vowels. For instance, the first three lines of the first poem are,

“GOOOOOOR ! GOOOOOOOOOO !

GOOOOOOOOOR !

GRAHHH ! GRAHH! GRAHH!”

The repetition of the vowels makes the audience more so on the pattern of the poem and the sound of the words than the words themselves. The language of animals is focused closely on tonality, a slight change of tones dictates specific emotions and actions. McClure mimics this with the usage of punctuation, as he uses it to punctuate and exaggerate the animalistic language. He uses an exclamation point after every word except for the main line of the poem. With the usage of exclamation points and the rhythmic pattern, McClure builds his poems in crescendos and diminuendos. In the first poem, the peak of such a crescendo is the line, “BE NOT SUGAR BUT BE LOVE”. This line is structured as a demand and is the center of the poem itself. The particular usage of the word ‘sugar’ could mean artificial flavoring. Suggesting that one should not be artificial in achieving lust, but rather should aim for love. This adds to the animalistic theme of McClure's poems in that the main distinction made between man and beast is lust and love.  Beasts are often stereotyped as being unable to love, to only lust after another being yet as humans, we have the capacity for love making us ‘human’. Yet after the crescendo of the main line the last three lines diminuendos, “looking for sugar!/GAHHHHHHHH!/ROWRR!/GROOOOOOOOOH!” (McClure 1). The last three lines give a finite end to the poem due to the rhythmic pattern. The rhythms of the sounds start to echo each other as well, therefore adding to the pattern. In particular, the usage of the word “sugar”, has a “ga” sound, which is why McClure uses “GAH” after the initial poetic line. This then creates smooth transitions between the animalistic and poetic lines.  The transitions are also done through the usage of capitalization. In order to give the animalistic sounds the same rhetorical meaning of human language, there is a heavy focus on the intonation and vocalization of the animalistic sounds. For instance, “GRAHHH! GRAHH! GRAHH! / Grah goooor! Ghahh! Graaarr ! Greeeer ! Grayowhr !” (McClure 1).  McClure uses the capitalization to demonstrate that in the first line, there is extreme emotion being demonstrated, yet in the second line, the capitalization is only used to punctuate each word as if making a statement. McClures usage of animalistic sounds and poetic verse leads to the question of the materiality of language.