Arnold

Poetry / Charlie Clark

:: Arnold ::

Honestly 
it is 

awful 
the August 

heat smell 
and waves 

rising from 
the freshly 

repaved lengths 
of blacktop 

the morning 
sun’s light 

glaring 
so brightly 

across it 
even silhouettes 

of the old 
dotted white 

lines now 
buried 

beneath 
the tar 

shine faintly 
through 

though 
silhouette 

is not 
the word 

I am 
looking for 

neither is 
pentimento 

though 
with it 

in mind 
my line of 

thought drifts 
to the way 

in old paintings 
X-Rays can 

expose 
for instance 

inscriptions 
thought 

better off 
hidden 

on a Dutch 
cartouche 

or the profiled 
ghost of 

a begging 
man’s face 

melted along 
a saint’s lapel 

and with 
that I am 

returned 
to the table 

where 
after her own 

digression into 
the way 

looking 
at the work 

of Lucian Freud 
all she sees 

is Francis 
Bacon’s mastery 

peeking through 
Liz said 

palimpsest 
and so 

dignified 
my description 

of words 
lovers wrote 

each other 
across 

their windshields’ 
interiors 

words 
needing 

their bodies’ 
heat present 

to arise 
in this heat 

I say palimpsest 
and receive 

such a sudden 
breadth of 

her bearing 
it is like 

the lone 
blunt laugh 

she gave 
absolute 

as a knuckle 
rapping 

table wood 
at my suggestion 

that 
the pleasure had 

the third time 
through Dumb 

and Dumber 
could rival 

that of 
Throne of Blood 

is now 
and forever 

part of 
my narrative of 

the term 
so too 

her saying 
how 

strange it is 
given 

the long 
plight of 

the human 
animal’s 

living 
that we don’t 

all have 
to the point 

of pain 
a need to 

see nightly 
the fire-

brightened 
faces of 

infants 
gently rocked 

to sleep 
that the 

Barbarians 
were just 

the poor 
saps who 

hadn’t learned 
Greek yet 

her oblique 
tenderness 

toward 
anyone’s 

insomnia 
and 

the many 
balder things 

she quietly 
conveyed 

with all 
sincerity 

put it 
in an ode 

do it 
before 

the subject 
comes back 

an elegy 
don’t have 

heroes 
casually 

inquire 
hard 

don’t smoke 
unless 

you must 
walk 

know 
no matter 

how hard 
on the nose 

this may 
strike you 

you know 
or soon will 

come to 
all the ways 

the body is 
imperiled 

that you 
must 

determine 
to cherish 

yourself 
yourself 

that when 
your heart 

declines 
to continue 

when your 
tongue 

goes black 
the best 

requiem 
you can 

hope to 
receive 

will be 
the one 

set forth 
by the sewing 

of your soul’s 
own seeds

 

 

 

 

From the writer

:: Account ::

I start­ed this poem short­ly after attend­ing the memo­r­i­al ser­vice for my for­mer teacher Stan­ley Plum­ly. At the recep­tion after the ser­vice, I recon­nect­ed with Eliz­a­beth Arnold, anoth­er for­mer pro­fes­sor whose tute­lage in the class­room and exam­ple as a writer on the page were and con­tin­ue to be tremen­dous­ly impor­tant to me. I’ve read her books, The Reef, Civ­i­liza­tion, Efface­ment, Life, and Skele­ton Coast, greed­i­ly, as they have come out—usually reread­ing all of the pre­vi­ous books pri­or to start­ing the newest one on the occa­sion of its release. I find it an illu­mi­nat­ing way to take in the work of a poet I adore, to see how the new work con­nects to the work already avail­able. It is also invig­o­rat­ing, as a writer, to see just how many fresh sur­pris­es and plea­sures I find in her work, even after so many reread­ings. Her atten­tion to syn­tac­tic and visu­al detail is unique and unpar­al­leled. I par­tic­u­lar­ly appre­ci­ate the way her work can tog­gle between, or simul­ta­ne­ous­ly con­jure, a very frank and par­tic­u­lar under­stand­ing of the per­ils of bod­i­ly human exis­tence and a joy acti­vat­ed by lan­guage, his­to­ry, travel—all the things the body can engage in/with to pitch said per­ils in relief. They are haunt­ed poems whose speci­fici­ties refuse to be haunt­ed. Each time I encounter Liz’s work, I am remind­ed that hers is a means of intel­lec­tion I would do well to mod­el in my own life and writing. 

Think­ing about Liz, and think­ing about hon­or­ing my men­tors (I had been work­ing, on and off, on an ele­gy for Stan for some months after his pass­ing), I decid­ed it was impor­tant and nec­es­sary to cel­e­brate Liz as a writer and thinker. This poem is the result. The ini­tial drafts start­ed with mem­o­ries of cer­tain exchanges and com­ments I recall from the work­shop of hers I took in (I think) the spring of 2001. Par­tic­u­lar­ly, I had the for­tu­nate (and admit­ted­ly hum­bling) expe­ri­ence of dis­cov­er­ing, mid-class, that I did not know the mean­ing of the word palimpsest (which, as the poem indi­cates, Liz used to describe a part of the work of mine then under dis­cus­sion). Liz was delight­ed at the oppor­tu­ni­ty to intro­duce the term; the con­ver­sa­tion soon wan­dered more gen­er­al­ly into the plea­sures of spe­cif­ic words: their sounds, their mean­ings, their ety­mo­log­i­cal roots. It is par­tic­u­lar­ly instruc­tive to have the lived expe­ri­ence of learn­ing the mean­ing of palimpsest etched into my mem­o­ry in this way, the term becom­ing a palimpsest reveal­ing itself and this broad­er swath of expe­ri­ence. Liz made lan­guage acti­vate for me. I am grate­ful to Liz for this, for how she serves as a mod­el, and for the restless/flawless body of work she has pro­duced over the years. I con­tin­ue to be her awed student. 

 

Char­lie Clark stud­ied poet­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land. His work has appeared in The New Eng­land Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Smar­tish Pace, Three­pen­ny Review, West Branch, and oth­er jour­nals. A 2019 NEA fel­low and recip­i­ent of schol­ar­ships to the Bread Loaf Writ­ers’ Con­fer­ence, he is the author of The Newest Employ­ee of the Muse­um of Ruin (Four Way Books, 2020). He lives in Austin, TX