The Little Door Slides Back

by Jeff Clark

But then, from way off, with cranking
comes my night, and when it arrives
I go to it like a callboy to a c-note.
--"My Interior"

"Jeff Clark's poems . . . marry the stoned reveries of our postmodern era with the symbolist bliss of a previous one . . . In meticulously crafted verse and prose poems, The Little Door Slides Back offers the reader glimpses of a shadow world, seen by a visionary who has a clear strategy for depicting them." --*Ruth Andrews, Rain Taxi

"A 120-page spell . . . This is a beautiful work whose accuracy edges on the uncanny. Within, among, and around it all is presence, an almost hallucinogenic immediacy in which everything is seen and is in turn seeing." --Cole Swenson, American Letters & Commentary

"Clark integrates fin-de-siècle richness, hallucinatory vision, and a gothicism extracted from the bleak cul-de-sacs of postmodern life . . . constructing a flaneur who is both terrified and bemused by the world he enters as 'the little door slides back.'"--John Yau, Boston Review

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published March 1, 2000

Reviews

[John Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb, nearly seamless piece of Decadent/Surrealist/post language work which will be a cult classic in a few decades.

[C.S. Carrier · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been years since I read this book and I still can't articulate how it killed.

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book feels like the book of the unhealthy relationship, or the toxic speaker, even though there are times when it just feels like the speaker is misunderstood. I like the book for the unusual motives it elaborates on. I like the book because it feels to me all these poems eventually lead to an impression of "Jeff Clark," the guy who's written the book. And I believe I'm being led to "Jeff Clark" because of the central poem "Some Information About Twenty-Three Years of Existence," where the wasted imagery that was featured in previous poems reappears there. And I guess I like this book for the way it reminds me of a couple other poets I like: Mark Levine and Brenda Shaughnessy.

[Kevin Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more but I just don't -- there is something very mannered and predictable in its American surrealist mode (especially being of a very francophilia flavor.) Eventually I'll need to figure out for myself why American surrealist poetry usually bores me but surrealist filmmakers like Guy Maddin or most of David Lynch fascinates me (yes, I realize Maddin is Canadian but he's really a nymphomaniac so we can claim him.)

[Mark Flowers · Rating 5 out of 5]

My knowledge of poetry pretty much ends with modernism (which is how far I got in school - I focused on fiction), so I don't think i have the words to describe this book, but just on a visceral level this really got me. Blow-notes, If I Don't Return, and Marie-Pristine were some of my favorites, but they were mostly all great.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

dude.

[Vicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Will need to revisit this soon

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Sometimes a ghost entered my heart and I could feel, and sometimes phrases entered my mind and I could speak, with reason. But never was I able to stay a man long enough to remain him."

[Douglas]

Lots of interesting words put together to form clauses. I have no idea what any of them mean. To be fair, I won't assign any star rating, since technically I have no comprehension of what I read.