Synopses & Reviews
Wallace Stevens, in his poem “A Postcard from the Volcano,” writes, “left what we felt / at what we saw.” Patricia Clark’s stunning fourth poetry collection, Sunday Rising, is full of such moments, carefully wrought and mined for their resonance. Haunting human forms rise from the underworld, seeking to communicate, longing for connection. In language as resounding and evocative as the subjects it describes, Sunday Rising questions the past, human relationships, the meaning of loss, and the author’s own heritage. With landscapes as familiar as Michigan and as distant as the shores of Western Europe, these poems bring to light the cracks and fissures in our world, amid lyric exhalations rising like clouds above the birds, trees, and coastlines, language capturing the poet’s spiritual longing as well as moments of passion and sorrow. From the first poem to the last, an intimate relationship with the physical world emerges. Its teachings, consolations, utterances, and echoes comprise a sense of discovery. The ethereal and often spiritual practice of seeing and taking note is celebrated, whether this process yields gemstones or ore, or words wrought into the music and imagery of poetry.
Review
Ravined and swooping, observant and questioning, musical and capacious, knowledgeable, playful, and precise, Clark's poems have the texture--and range--of life.
--Jane Hirshfield, author of Come, Thief
Synopsis
In her stunning fourth book of poetry, Patricia Clark brings to light the cracks and fissures in our world, in language that captures the poet’s spiritual longing, passion, and sorrow. From the first poem to the last, an intimate relationship with the physical world emerges. In language as resonant and evocative as the subjects it describes, Sunday Rising questions the past, human relationships, the meaning of loss, and the author’s own heritage.
Synopsis
In this volume, a poet expresses her desire to find a pastoral refuge in nature: Patricia Clark's poems explore not only refuge but also wonder and appreciation, as well as astonishment.
Synopsis
Patricia Clark's poems explore not only refuge but also wonder and appreciation, as well as astonishment.
A number of the 56 poems collected here show her grappling with loss, especially the loss of her mother, though she isn't one to indulge in misery. Instead, she goes walking. It is the harp tree in "The Poplar Adrift" that Clark imagines giving voice to sorrow, thus sparing those who stroll by"all the grief that passes" becoming, in the trees very fibers, sound on the air, a wind through branches and leaves.
Clark also finds opportunities for learning, for meditation, and for contemplation. Octavio Paz has written, "Nature speaks as though it were a lover." In many of the poems collected here, Clark listens to nature speaking and revels in this lover, aiming to capture some of the qualities of Michigan's trees, birds, and landscapes in lyric poems.
It is Clark's particular gift to give us "tasted" as she draws her readers into the world, inhabiting the worlds of nature, head, and heart.
About the Author
Patricia Clark is Poet-in-Residence and Professor in the Department of Writing at Grand Valley State University. She is the author of three books of poetry: She Walks Into the Sea, My Father on a Bicycle and North of Wondering, which won a first book competition.