Home > Tom Clark (poet) > Biography full

Tom Clark (poet)

American poet, editor and biographerFor other uses, see Tom Clark (disambiguation).

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

Contents

  • 1 Education and personal life
  • 2 Career
  • 3 Death
  • 4 Bibliography
    • 4.1 Poetry Collections
    • 4.2 Literary biography
    • 4.3 Fiction
    • 4.4 Essays on Poetry
    • 4.5 Other books by Clark
  • 5 References
  • 6 External links

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. It was while in Britain that Clark famously hitchhiked through Somerset in the company of Allen Ginsberg.

On March 22, 1968, he married Angelica Heinegg, at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, New York City. 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.

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, *led 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.

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

  • The World of Damon Runyon. Harper & Row. 1978. ISBN:978-0060107710.
  • The Great Naropa Poetry Wars. Cadmus Editions. 1980. ISBN:978-0932274069.
  • Late Returns: A Memoir of Ted Berrigan. Tombouctou Books. 1985. ISBN:978-0939180356.
  • Kerouac's Last Word: Jack Kerouac in Escapade. Water Row Books. February 1987. ISBN:978-0934953078.
  • Jack Kerouac: A Biography. Paragon House. December 1990. ISBN:978-1557783080.
  • Charles Olson: The Allegory of a Poet's Life. W. W. Norton & Company. April 1991. ISBN:978-0393029581.
  • Robert Creeley and the Genius of the American Common Place: Together with the Poet's Own Autobiography. New Directions. November 1, 1993. ISBN:978-0811212502.
  • Edward Dorn: A World of Difference. North Atlantic Books. March 21, 2002. ISBN:978-1556433979.
  • Jim Carroll. Longhouse Press. 2010. ASIN:B003AONG7W.

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

  • The Poetry Beat: Reviewing the Eighties. University of Michigan Press. September 1990. ISBN:978-0472094288.
  • Problems of Thought: Paradoxical Essays. Effing/*y Possum. 2009.

Other books by Clark

  • Champagne and Baloney: The Rise and Fall of Finley's A's. Harper & Row. 1976. ISBN:978-0060108328.
  • No Big Deal: Mark Fidrych Interviewed by Tom Clark. Lippincott. 1977. ISBN:978-0397012336.
  • In the Shadow of the Capitol: Photographs by Carl Mydans for the U.S. Resettlement Administration, September 1935. Pataphysics Books, 2012. ISBN:978-0987338709.

References

    External links

    • Finding aid to the Tom Clark papers at Columbia University Rare Book & M*cript Library
    • Works by or about Tom Clark in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
    • The World Begins: A visit with Tom Clark
    • Tom Clark Author Page at Jacket Magazine
    • Tom Clark page at the Poetry Foundation
    • Tom Clark's Blog
    • Tom Clark page and poem at the Academy of American Poets
    • Tom Clark, 1941-. American author Washington University Libraries bio
    • "Knights of the Road" - Tom Clark reviews "This is the Beat Generation: New York, San Francisco, Paris" by James Campbell in the London Review of Books (Vol. 22 No. 13 · 6 Jul 2000)

    Tom Clark (poet) Is A Member Of

    83 Year Olds

    Tom