Gavin Goodwin, who teaches at Aberystwyth University in Wales, says the poetry of Thomas A. Clark is similar to the work of Objectivist poets such as Charles Reznikoff and Lorine Niedecker.
I’ve mentioned Reznikoff and Niedecker many times. Goodwin’s observations helped me think about the things I like about Clark and his poetry. Here’s the short list:
• Clark’s poems have sharp images drawn from the natural world and often appear as fragments. Each fragment is the recording of an image — something like a snapshot. Clark’s longer poems are collections of these short items.
• Clark goes his own way. He left school at 15 and supported himself by working at unskilled jobs in factories and warehouses. He’s self-educated.
• Clark came to literature through music. From popular music he discovered jazz and jazz lovers. He read Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums and started writing.
• Clark is interested in getting poetry outside of its traditional channels. In 1973, Clark and his wife, Laurie, a visual artist, founded Moschatel Press. They publish short poems with illustrations on cards and in booklets. They’ve printed some poems on kites and bags.
• Clark’s poems sometimes are reflections, rather than an image. The reflections work with the images. For example, Clark often walks through the landscape, and his poetry is full of images of stone, water, snow, lichens. Occasionally, you get a line that suggests why he keeps walking:
Attention to detail revives the sense of scale.
That short poem, untitled, was written in 2016.
• Source: Gavin Goodwin, “Beyond the Page: The formal possibilities of Thomas A. Clark”; Writing in Practice, 5 (2019). The article is on the site of the National Association of Writers in Education:
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