Craft: Joanna McClure

Joanna McClure (b. 1930) is a little known poet associated with the San Francisco Renaissance and the Beat Generation. Though less known as her ex-husband, Michael McClure, Joanna McClure’s contributions to poetry should be yawped from the roofs of the world.

“Poetry is where I keep company with myself,” McClure said, and like other Beat poets, her aesthetic was energetic, open, and exclamatory.

Joanna McClure: “I long, long to join myself / Back, back into all that life / From which I came. / I long, long to feed life directly.”