Huge Dreams: San Francisco and Beat Poems

By Michael McClure

Huge Dreams republishes two books, out of print for thirty years, which together are a cornerstone of the Beat movement: The New Book/A Book of Torture and Star. Both were influential in expanding poetry into a larger world: the West Coast Beat phenomena, which focused on nature, the environment, antiwar activities, individual anarchism, Zen Buddhism, jazz, and a kind of romantic mystical thought. With these books Michael McClure brought an animal energy and a knowledge of art and physical human nature that was new to the scene.

The New Book/A Book of Torture was written spontaneously while McClure was in a "dark night of the soul" brought on by psychedelics. A single long poem of experience and exploration, it offers the means of liberation from the darkness it examines. Star is a wide-ranging book of chalice seeking, spiritual discovery, and political protest, grounded in the emotions and sensations of eros and play.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140589171
• ISBN13: 9780140589177
• Release Date: May 1999
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher