A West Coast beat, Michael McClure was less of a presence in New York than the seminal figures: Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, but he was no less of a master poet, combining his love of nature with traditional forms such as villanelles, sonnets and sestinas. One of the last beat poets, Michael McClure (87) died this week.

Back in 1956, at the pivotal Six Gallery reading, where Ginsberg read Howl for an audience for the first time, and a shy Kerouac passed around a jug of red wine, as legend has it, McClure performed his 1954 poem, “For the Death of a Hundred Whales,” breaking down its ballad meter to A-B-C-B rhymes, to form a “cubist poem,” as he explained in his “The Beat Journey: An Interview.” He combined a love of theater, poetry, and art with his ecological concerns, and, among his credits, performed with Ray Manzarek of The Doors.

Handsome as a matinee idol, McClure was also in the center of a scandal involving his play, The Beard. A fictive Jean Harlow makes it with a fictive Billy the Kid, naked. Not the kind of thing you could do onstage mid-‘60’s. Famously Rip Torn revived the play in London in 1968. If there is anything that defines beat, it is being censored and/or arrested for indecency.

In 2009, I invited McClure to read at a celebration of Burroughs’ Naked Lunch at the School of Visual Arts. He stayed at Allen Ginsberg’s loft, now run by the estate, and read poems and prose, an overview of a long career, asking only for one stage prop: flowers. Having had many a poet as a guest over the years, I was surprised by this modest request, remembering that I had to provide a pot of hot tea for Allen Ginsberg in 1984, when he read from his newly published Collected Poems. Sure, a cup is fine, but keeping it hot for the duration of a reading—that’s a project. So, on my way to the 23^rd Street SVA Theater, I bought some fresh stems at the Union Square market, and placed a vase at the stage’s edge.

McClure read beautifully, a lion troubadour. The late great Hal Willner accompanied John Ventimiglia for a reading of “The Talking Asshole.” Later, the peonies became a useful prop when James Grauerholz, Burroughs’ homme d’affaires wrapped the program in a Chaplinesque finale: he picked up the bouquet to speak about why he did what he did for William: I did it for love. McClure helped set the stage for a romantic tribute. Then Michael and his wife Amy, yearning for a great New York favorite, went for paella at the Chelsea Hotel’s El Quixote. R.I.P.