McClure’s Many Identities
In Michael McClure’s “Peyote Poem,” the speaker describes his experience of the world around him while high on the psychoactive drug, peyote. McClure uses synecdoche to pull objects and aspects of reality apart in order to show how his consciousness is altered and perhaps even heightened while high.
In the second part of the poem, McClure’s speaker appears to be looking out “From the cliff of the park — the city — a twilight / foggy vista” (268). He breaks the view up into its parts — its textures and tones, and even its aural qualities: “Here is the light full of grains and color / the pink auras and fresh orange. The rasping sounds, // hideous buildings leaning into emptiness” (269). These separate aspects of the view stand in for the whole view that the speaker is perceiving, but he does not stop separating parts from their whole there: “The fact of my division is simple I am a spirit / of flesh in the cold air. I need no answer // I do not lean on others. I am separate, distinct. // There is nothing to drag me down.”
The speaker is identified first by his spirit alone and then by his flesh alone, insinuating that both of these parts are essential aspects of his identity, yet they are unmistakably separate from one another. But these varied identities are not in tension with one another, as he needs no answer concerning who/what he is and is therefore not connected to anything that could drag him down or weigh on him.
These multiple identities are capable of different types of perception: “I am in the Park above all and cold. // I am in the room in light Hell and warm Heaven.” McClure breaks up the speaker’s senses so that they stand separately from each other; his flesh feels the cold, his spirit perceives the light and warmth of heaven and hell, all at once. This could indicate that the parts of a person are far more knowledgeable than the whole person, with all their thoughts, feelings, and sensations. One whole person cannot stand above the park, in heaven, and in hell all at once, but the many parts can.
McClure’s speaker says, “I am lost in memories. I move feeling the pleasant bulk / of my body. I am pleased with my warm pain / I think of its cessation with pleasure.” Here, McClure brings in another aspect of being — the mind with its memories — and a threat to the state of being, which is death. But the speaker is able to lose himself in memory, move and perceive his own physicality, feel the warmth of heaven, and simultaneously peer at death “with pleasure.” His identity is not bound to any one aspect of being, and is in fact not really bound at all. He says, “I know it will not change. I know I am here, beyond all // in myself” (269). His consciousness is changed and heightened while high on peyote, and this experience leads him to conclude that even death cannot change his identity, which is multiple and varied.
McClure, Michael. “Peyote Poem.” The Portable Beat Reader, edited by Ann Charters, Penguin Books, 1992, pp. 265–273.
