Disordered Ideas - Hardcover

Clark, Tom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0876856970 ISBN 13: 9780876856970

Publisher: Black Sparrow Pr, 1987

Synopsis

Tom Clark describes himself as an artist “living along the inter-dimensional rift zone of a society caught between its future in the realm of electronic magic and its past in the spell-casting of the caves.” In Disordered Ideas , his poetry is like an exquisitely sensitive the needle jumps across the page, making a manic record of every quake, slip, and near-disaster along the postmodern-communications fault line.He derides the new media, the isolating, enervating “brave new work” we do in front of computer screens, and the death of the personal in the digital age. Indeed, the only digits he has any use for are the five that make up the human he revels in man-made artifacts, especially paintings and stories and poems. His topical verse is satiric and humorous, but when he writes about what he admires―the canvases of Caspar David Friedrich, the renunciations of Rimbaud, the political aphorisms of Brecht, his poems can seize the heart.

About this title

Review

1880
2 A.m.
5 P.m.
Africa - 1891
After Dante
The Age Of Cain Diet
Alice In Terminal Land
The Anarchist
Angel Arcs
Angelic Witnesses
Angelology
Anti-solar
Arc
Arcadia
Artaud And The Angel After Mexico
Artaud And The Angels
At Spieker Pool
Autumn On The Campus
Bad Teeth
Bed At Tor House
Being
Belief
Bitter Pursuit
Black Saturday
Bound
Brave New Work
Burst Phase
Calving
Caspar David Friedrich And The Interior Dictation
Celine Again
Cheating
Cinderella
Circling Back To Earth
A Citizen Of The Future
City Life Toward Heaven From The Continent Of Sleep
Commuter Flight
Commuting
Core Sample
Dawn Moon Over Bay Through Clouds Above Eucalyptus
Democracy
Despite Its Having Acted For So Long As If It Were
Disordered Ideas
The Divers
The Divine Comedy
Divine Dancers
The Dollmaker
Double
Drift
Eclair
The Eleven O'clock News
The Engine Nacelles Of A Dc-10 Seen As Signals ...
Fault
Fear
Fear Of Fear
February
Free Fall
Friedrich's Dream
Friedrich's Rejoiner
Friedrich's Vision
Friedrich's Vision (ii)
Frontier
Glassitude
Going Over
Haunt
Here
How It Goes
Identification Tags
In The Wet
Induction
The Invention Of Printing
Legacy
Locker Room At Harmon Gym
Looking For Work In Teaching
Loop
Miles Davis
Moment
Moonrise On The Street Of Futons
Mortality
Muffled Report
New Idol
Nobody There
Northwest 157
Oiling The Stars
The Opium Smoker
Orpheus Out Of Gas
Over The Eastern Slope
Poetry In Alexandria
Pressures Of The Assembly Line
Printing And History
Reading The Technical Journals
Revelation
Rilke
Rimbaud
Rimbaud And The Death Of Poetry
Rip Chord
Sadly Celine
Seeking Work And %or Permits In Berkeley
Sexual Theory Of History
Shattuckworld
The Shield Of Charles Olson
Shivering Into The Future
Sinking
Small Change
Social Limits
Star Wars
Straight Up
Stupor
Suicide With Squirtgun
Suspension
The System
Technology
Technophilology
Teflon And Velcro
Their Frozen Pinions Are Ice
Thinking About Pound On Shattuck Avenue
Thrall
Three Little Words
Time (1)
Too Late For Pastoral
Transformational Propositions
United 524
Untying
Uses Of Being
Vacuum
Vanity Of Duluoz
Voodoo Macbeth
White Monkeys
Wrong From The Start
Yuppieworld
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

From Library Journal

Kelly and Clark have each published over 50 collections of prose and poetry, having eschewed large commercial presses for small, independent literary ones. In their own right, both writers can claim successful literary careers as poets, novelists, teachers, theorists, and editors. Kelly continues to focus on the image, around which the rest of the poem eddies. Often erudite and philosophical, his poems seem to be arguments for, or illustrations of, some poetic. Organic in form, they always reflect honesty and sincerity: "I don't want to sit and type,/ but float garmented in light/ in the middle of the sky"; "I never believed I had something to say/ but believed what I said." And we believe and appreciate his tireless efforts over the years. Clark's poems, on the other hand, seem casual, conversational, like little afterthoughts, often stinging with social satire, as in this poem about the state of the job market in his profession: "unless I could quickly develop/ a strong background in the/ instruction of remedial English composition to lefthanded/ Icelandic women with green eyes/ I might as well forget about it." Many poems are addressed to his literary mentors: Celine, Kerouac, Olson, Pound, Rilke, Rimbaud. Missing from the work, however, is music, melody of lines, attention to soundoften a flaw of free verse. Both Kelly and Clark are important and prolific writers of their generation, and libraries wanting to reflect the full range of contemporary verse should own at least one volume by each. These newest collections would be good choices. Thom Tammaro, Multidisciplinary Studies, Moorhead Univ., Minn.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Black Sparrow Pr
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0876856970
• ISBN 13: 9780876856970
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 202