Tom Clark (poet)

Tom Clark (March 1, 1941 – August 18, 2018, aged 77) was an American poet, editor and biographer.[1]

For other uses, see Tom Clark (disambiguation).

Education and personal life

Clark was born on the Near West Side of Chicago, and attended Fenwick High School in Oak Park. After high school, he attended the University of Michigan, where he received a Hopwood Award for poetry. He then won a Fulbright Scholarship to undertake graduate study at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in England (1963-5), before spending further time pursuing doctoral research (on the advice of Donald Davie) at the newly-established University of Essex.[2][3] It was while in Britain that Clark famously hitchhiked through Somerset in the company of Allen Ginsberg.[3]

On March 22, 1968, he married Angelica Heinegg, at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, New York City.[4] As of 2013, he was living in California.

Career

Clark was poetry editor of The Paris Review from 1963 to 1973, and published numerous volumes of poetry with Black Sparrow Press, including a verse biography: Junkets on a Sad Planet: Scenes from the Life of John Keats (1994). His literary essays and reviews appeared in The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, London Review of Books, and many other journals. Some of his essays on contemporary poetry were collected in The Poetry Beat: Reviewing the Eighties. From 1987 to 2008, he taught poetics at New College of California.[5]

Residing in California for the remainder of his life, Clark was an active writer, producing poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. In 1991, he published a biography of Charles Olson, one of his poetic mentors, titled Charles Olson: The Allegory of a Poet’s Life (Norton: 1991).

Death

On the evening of Friday, August 17, 2018, Clark was walking across a street in Berkeley, California, and was hit by a car at about 8:40 p.m. He died on the following day.[6]

Bibliography

Poetry collections
  • Stones. Harper & Row. 1969.
  • Air. Harper & Row. 1970.
  • Green. Black Sparrow Press. March 26, 1971. ISBN 978-0876850817.
  • Smack. Black Sparrow Press. December 1972.
  • Blue. Black Sparrow Press. August 1974. ISBN 978-0876851838.
  • Fan Poems. North Atlantic Books. 1976. ISBN 978-0913028452.
  • When Things Get Tough on Easy Street. Black Sparrow Press. 1978. ISBN 978-0876853498.
  • A Short Guide to the High Plains, For Ed Dorn. Cadmus Editions. November 1980. ISBN 978-0932274175.
  • Paradise Resisted: Selected Poems 1978-1984. Black Sparrow Press. May 1, 1984. ISBN 978-0876856116.
  • The Border: Poem and Drawings. Coffee House Press. 1985. ISBN 0918273064.
  • Disordered Ideas. Black Sparrow Press. June 1, 1987. ISBN 978-0876856956.
  • Easter Sunday: Selected Poems 1962 and 1987. Coffee House Press. October 1, 1987. ISBN 978-0918273277.
  • Fractured Karma. Black Sparrow Press. February 1990. ISBN 978-0876857939.
  • Sleepwalkers Fate: New and Selected Poems, 1965-1991. Black Sparrow Press. June 1992. ISBN 978-0876858707.
  • Junkets on a Sad Planet: Scenes from the Life of John Keats. Black Sparrow Press. January 1, 1994. ISBN 978-0876859186.
  • Like Real People. Black Sparrow Press. October 1, 1995. ISBN 978-0876859841.
  • White Thought. Hard Press. 1997. ISBN 978-8890972096.
  • Empire of Skin. Black Sparrow Press. November 1997. ISBN 978-1574230512.
  • Light and Shade: New and Selected Poems. Coffee House Press. April 1, 2006. ISBN 978-1566891837.
  • Threnody. effing press. 2006.
  • Trans/Versions. Libellum Books. January 1, 2010. ISBN 978-0975299388.
  • The New World. Libellum Books. January 1, 2010. ISBN 978-0975299371.
  • Feeling For The Ground. BlazeVOX Books. February 11, 2010. ISBN 978-1935402961.
  • Something In The Air. Shearsman Books. March 15, 2010. ISBN 978-1848611085.
  • At The Fair. BlazeVOX Books. June 21, 2011. ISBN 978-1609640446.
  • Canyonesque. BlazeVOX Books. September 16, 2011. ISBN 978-1609640712.
  • Distance. BlazeVOX Books. April 6, 2012. ISBN 978-1609640972.
  • Truth Game. BlazeVOX Books. July 10, 2013. ISBN 978-1609641443.
  • Evening Train. BlazeVOX Books. July 11, 2014. ISBN 978-1609641870.
  • Ride. Flow Press. May 25, 2017. ISBN 978-0998735719.

Literary biography

Fiction
  • The Master. Pentagram Press. 1979.
  • Who Is Sylvia?. Blue Wind Press. 1979.
  • The Last Gas Station & Other Stories. Black Sparrow Press. June 1, 1980. ISBN 978-0876854563.
  • Heartbreak Hotel. Toothpaste Press. 1981. ISBN 978-0915124572.
  • The Exile of Céline. Random House. Jan 12, 1987. ISBN 978-0394553122.
  • The Spell: A Romance. Black Sparrow Press. Jan 1, 2000. ISBN 978-1574231243.

Essays on Poetry

Other books by Clark

References
  1. Sandomir, Richard (August 24, 2018). "Tom Clark, 77, Is Dead; Poet, Biographer, Baseball Bard". The New York Times – via NYTimes.com.
  2. 'Tom Clark', poets.org . Retrieved 6 January 2020.
  3. Tom Clark, 'Letters Home from Cambridge (1963-5)', Jacket Magazine, issue 20, December 2002. Retrieved 6 January 2020.
  4. Biographical data on Clark taken from contributor's notes section at The Holiday Album: Greeting Card Poems For All Occasions feature at Jacket magazine, edited by Elaine Equi, with a poem by Clark
  5. Tom Clark Author Page at the Jacket Magazine website
  6. "Pedestrian, 77, dies after driver struck him south of The Alameda crosswalk". Berkeleyside. 2018-08-18. Retrieved 2018-08-18.
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