Touching the Edge:
Dharma Devotions from the Hummingbird Sangha
Booklist says,
"Beat poets McClure [and others]
caused a great seismic shift in literature with their fresh
and liberated approaches to language and focus on the
chimerical workings of the mind. Their meditative
perspectives led not only to revolutionary poetry but to
sustained and beautifully articulated Buddhist practices. In
his new collection, McClure presents a series of dharma
devotions -- lithely observant and gently philosophical
musings -- that flow down the center of elongated pages like
brooks, tree trunks, reeds, or the brush strokes of
calligraphy. As the reader's eyes slide happily down these
wavy word columns, joyful images of the natural world --
hummingbirds and raccoons, honeysuckles and waterfalls, fog
and stone -- open like flowers in the verdant field of
McClure's sweetly bemused commentary on our wayward nature.
Delicate as his poems are, they nevertheless pack a punch,
powered by the tension of dualities and charged with agile
leaps of thought."
BONUS: Few reviews notice the delicious subtext -- a
biography of the poet's calico kitten growing to cathood through the
year of zazen these poems reflect, a constant reminder of animal
Buddha-nature. I'm reminded of Kerouac's line about "the little cat
crying for meat, himself a little meat soul." And here she is.
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