Poets and Poems: Patricia Clark and “Self-Portrait with a Million Dollars”

Self-Portrait with a Million Dollars: Poems, a collection by Patricia Clark published in 2020, seems at first glance to be about nature. It includes poems about river birches, birds like hawks and mallards, gardens, moths, bees, spiders, the orca whale, and more. Even the poems not directly about nature touch upon the subject or theme in some way. 

And yet, as you read and speak some of the poems aloud, you at first sense and then see that these are not nature poems. They may use nature as a subject, they may display nature in all its wonder and diversity, but they are definitely not nature poems. Nature may be the frame or the stage, but Clark is writing about life.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The Raven – poem by Edgar Alllan Poe at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Requiem – poem by David Whyte.

 

A Conversation with Jared Cater, Part 2 – Sunil Iyengar at New Verse Review.

 

Autumn Damask – poem by Sandra Marchetti at Every Day Poems.

 

“Low Barometer,” poem by Robert Bridges – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Poets and Poems: Patricia Clark and "O Lucky Day"

I’m still trying to make my mind up about whether Patricia Clark writes meditative poems or poetic meditations in her new collection, O Lucky Day. I could call it in either direction, and I suspect it won’t make much difference. Let’s say Clark’s poems contain more than a small element of meditation and let it go at that. 

She writes an open letter to her husband after a quarrel, calling it “Oxygen.” She describes bathing in the forest, and it becomes almost a uniting of skins, plants, and trees. She considers juneberry leaves as gold coins and dives into the wrecked landscape of Fukushima, or how common, everyday objects (a hat, a cigar box) evoke her grandfather. And she asks for a new face to cover her face, because “I’ve looked at myself too long.”

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Married to the Land – poem by David Whyte.

 

Burial at Sea – poem by Eric Fosbergh at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Poetry Prompt: The Phoenix – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“On a Raging Storm” and “Oceanic Flux” – poems by Jeff Kemper at Society of Classical Poets.

 

“The Silent Slain,” poem by Archibald MacLeish – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Imagine It – poem by Elizabeth Herron at Every Day Poems.