Michael McClure: Utilization of Synecdoche

Michael McClure was one of the Beat Generations most impactful writers and was one of the early pioneers who began their careers at the Six Gallery. McClure wrote unlike anybody else in the Beat Generation and this is due to his connection to ecology and his willingness to experiment with psychedelics, specifically peyote. This experimentation of psychedelics played a massive role in McClure’s writing style which featured heavy use of the writing tool synecdoche. Synecdoche is a tool which writer utilized to create vivid images for a reader by using a part of something to describe a whole. This tool is seen all throughout McClure’s work, and specifically in his “Peyote Poem”, in which his experiences on peyote allow him to describe imagery at a much more heightened sense.

“Peyote Poem” by Michael McClure, is much more than a writing surrounded around the hallucinations and experiences one will face while on psychedelics. The poem seeks to evoke thoughts of humans limiting themselves and their thoughts to their own spiritual experiences. To evoke those thoughts, McClure utilizes synecdoche to create vivid imagery that one would experience while on psychedelics. A quote which shows the use of synecdoche, is when McClure describes himself to be “in the barren warm universe of no time”(270). McClure uses this to portray the image of being on peyote, in which the psychedelic has allowed him to feel isolated in his own world, in which there is no real sense of time. Aside from the psychological effects of peyote, McClure also uses synecdoche to describe the physcial feelings of taking peyote. He does so in the quote, “I raise my head withe the beauty of final knowledge I step high in pride benevolence and awareness. The pain is part of me. The pain in my belly”(271). McClure uses this quote to show how not only the drug has opened his mind to the things around him, but also to show that while experiencing these revelations, he is still at the will of a drug and is still aware to the pain and the anguish which currently exist in his life.

The Portable Beat Reader. pp 270–271