Ghost Tantras (SIGNED)

McCLURE, Michael.

Ghost Tantras.

FIRST EDITION, SIGNED. San Francisco: self-published by the author; distributed by City Lights Books, 1964.

Octavo. 106 pp. Black-and-white photo-illustrated wrappers, $1.50 on the rear cover. Signed by Michael McClure on the title page. A near fine copy, with light wear to the extremities.

Michael McClure's Ghost Tantras is the experimental volume of "beast language" poems — a mix of lyrical, guttural, and laryngeal sound, lion roars and growls and preverbal utterance. McClure famously read the Tantras to the lions at the San Francisco Zoo, an event captured on film and now a primary document of mid-1960s San Francisco poetry performance; the rear cover instructs the reader to "READ ALOUD AND SING THEM."

His self-published Ghost Tantras in 1964 remains out of print for decades and is among his best-known and least-available books.

SKU TO-2026-044