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Music and Suicide: Poems
Flower on, happy paperwhite
When you bloom you're gorgeous
when you wilt
--"Drugs"
Jeff Clark's first collection, The Little Door Slides Back , was hailed as an unclassifiable classic in underground American "Remarkable for its liveliness and intelligence" ( Chicago Review ), "Amazing and ambitious" ( Rain Taxi ), "a 120-page spell" ( American Letters & Commentary ), "A happy sadomasochism, a luxuriance of prurience" ( Boston Review ), "Devoted to the idea of possibility in the poet who operates as free agent, looking to the weather not for the springs of dailiness but for some message from the aether" ( Arras ), "[Clark's work] creates . . . our own precursors, precursors who behave differently than our supposed avant-garde" ( Rhizome ).
In Music and Suicide Clark is no longer underground. He moves away from the sinisterism and mask-ridden black humor of his debut, toward new realms of clarity, dissent, and sex. Neither a traditionalist nor an experimentalist-if being one means not being the other-Clark once again is engaged in radically beautiful poem-making, but, as Guy Kyser states, "Something affected him down in the desert."
When you bloom you're gorgeous
when you wilt
--"Drugs"
Jeff Clark's first collection, The Little Door Slides Back , was hailed as an unclassifiable classic in underground American "Remarkable for its liveliness and intelligence" ( Chicago Review ), "Amazing and ambitious" ( Rain Taxi ), "a 120-page spell" ( American Letters & Commentary ), "A happy sadomasochism, a luxuriance of prurience" ( Boston Review ), "Devoted to the idea of possibility in the poet who operates as free agent, looking to the weather not for the springs of dailiness but for some message from the aether" ( Arras ), "[Clark's work] creates . . . our own precursors, precursors who behave differently than our supposed avant-garde" ( Rhizome ).
In Music and Suicide Clark is no longer underground. He moves away from the sinisterism and mask-ridden black humor of his debut, toward new realms of clarity, dissent, and sex. Neither a traditionalist nor an experimentalist-if being one means not being the other-Clark once again is engaged in radically beautiful poem-making, but, as Guy Kyser states, "Something affected him down in the desert."
- GenresPoetry
67 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 19, 2023
this was not good. i’m reading this while eating a not good meal. so i’ll review both. the fish du jour was 90% bones. the writing was unmoving.
why was he talking about how strange her labia was? why is this panna cotta so gelatinous?
the wine tastes cheap but at least i’m feeling drunk. this book was bad but at least i read something.
maybe i don’t like poetry and panna cotta all that much, generally.
vacay book #3
why was he talking about how strange her labia was? why is this panna cotta so gelatinous?
the wine tastes cheap but at least i’m feeling drunk. this book was bad but at least i read something.
maybe i don’t like poetry and panna cotta all that much, generally.
vacay book #3
February 5, 2008
Awful. Awful. But I hear his first book, The Little Door Slides Back, is much better. And he does some might fine book designs.
July 6, 2007
More like 4.5 stars, but there is no half star option...a worthy collection of well-crafted pieces that are rhythmic and melodic. Terrific prose-poems, esp. Shiva-Hive, Clark's lyric essay, which is so wise and manic it deserves to be anthologized indefinitely. Excellent line from the poem Dilator: What I was lacking you brought back/I was building a clean, strong structure/and it cracked.
One or two pieces pale next to the bravado and slap of the others, but they are few and far between (and even when extracted and read out of context they're still solid, just not fantastic).
Not crazy about the title. Otherwise, outstanding read.
One or two pieces pale next to the bravado and slap of the others, but they are few and far between (and even when extracted and read out of context they're still solid, just not fantastic).
Not crazy about the title. Otherwise, outstanding read.
March 17, 2008
Not a fan of this collection at all.
The only thing that kept it from getting one star is that I did like two of the poems in the first section of the book. Otherwise, I felt like I just didn't "get it" through many of the pieces and others just felt like a word jumble with no real point.
To be fair, it is not the style of poetry that I typically like...
The only thing that kept it from getting one star is that I did like two of the poems in the first section of the book. Otherwise, I felt like I just didn't "get it" through many of the pieces and others just felt like a word jumble with no real point.
To be fair, it is not the style of poetry that I typically like...
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews