Patricia Clark

Patricia Clark is an award-winning poet who is a Professor in the Department of Writing at Grand Valley State University, in Allendale, Michigan. The Poet Laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan from 2...

She Walks into the Sea
Poems by Patricia Clark

Patricia Clark

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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.

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 tree’s 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.

Reviews

"The language throughout the poems in She Walks Into the Sea is as vibrant, varied, and abundant as field flowers and grasses across a June countryside. The voice of these poems blends and encompasses like an easy wind, measuring and controlling the motion by which one passes through their landscapes. It speaks of the mysterious certainties and beautiful lies of nature, including human. If there is such a thing as a perfectly crafted poem, then a reader will find more than one in this book." - from award-winning poet Pattiann Rogers

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"I've been reading Patricia Clark for a long time. She has written some extraordinary poems. She Walks into the Sea is full of them. She should be admired and read by those who think that poetry matters." - Jim Harrison, author of In Search of Small Gods and Dalva.