Newfield poet to release her new book later this month

By Jamie Swinnerton
Tompkins Weekly

 

Carolyn Clark is inspired by many things. Nature, mythology, horses, skiing, and the layered relationship between a mother and daughter are just a few of the themes she has explored in her many books of poetry. Later this month, on April 20, Clark will be reading at Buffalo Street Books in Ithaca from her latest book, “Choose Lethe: Remember to Forget” from Finishing Line Press, which continues the journey through many of these themes.

Clark grew up in Ithaca and received her undergraduate from Cornell University. She now lives in Newfield with her husband and their horses, one of which can be seen on the cover of the new book. She’s an experienced traveler, having gone many times to various places in Europe when she was younger, but this area is home.
“In 2007, as a classroom teacher in Maryland where I was working, I was getting restless to have country living again, which I kind of grew up within the outskirts of Ithaca and also New Hampshire and Vermont,” Clark said. “I was really missing the country and horses.”

Her best friend from high school set her up with a piece of land that she and her husband developed and now live on.

Clark considers her new book as an “Irish Twin” to the book she recently published with Cayuga Lake Books, “New Found Land.” It is her fourth book in four years and she wants people to know that it’s very accessible and easy to read, woven with local themes.

“I’m really excited because it’s really earthy, very horsey, it reflects my love for nature,” Clark said, “but it’s also adolescent themed and mother-daughter tension.”

Clark’s mother, Florence A. Clark, also a writer, will be present at the Buffalo Street Books event and will be participating in the reading. It was, at least in part, her mother’s encouragement that helped Clark become the writer she is today. The two are still close and often discuss their writing with each other.

The creative bug runs through Clark’s ancestry through the women in her family tree. Beyond her writer mother, Clark’s grandmother was a landscape artist, and her great-grandmother was a lover of poetry.

“She brought my mother up reading and memorizing poems,” Clark said. “Here we are reading poetry, five generations later.”

When she moved back to Newfield Clark said she felt a strong connection to the land and the people who helped them make it a home. The modest Amish-built home has the simple, quiet peace that Clark said she needs to write. The horses, which have always been apart of her life, are a blessing to have, she said.

With this book, Clark wanted to give people poetry that could be recognized by high school students as well as adults, and young children and speaks to the heart.
“I want people to read poetry that doesn’t rhyme,” Clark said. “It’s free verse. People have a lot of fears about poetry and I want them to get over that and enjoy it.”

The book’s title (and also title poem), Choosing Lethe, is a nod to Clark’s love of mythology, as the river Lethe ran through the underworld in Greek Mythology, and all those that drank from it became forgetful. The poem was written as Clark spent time with her father, who had the equivalent of Alzheimer’s, in his last few years. Mills Gardner Clark passed away last summer well into his 90s after many years as a professor in the Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) at Cornell.

“It was a blessing to have him in my life during those early retirement years,” Clark said.

Clark submitted a manuscript for the book last year that pulled together many years of writing, including a poem she wrote as a teenager at Ithaca High School. While working on her other Finishing Line Press book, “Mnemosyne: The Long Travers,” she collected years and years of past poems, too many for one book. The books, Lethe and Mnemosyne, are complimentary publications. Lethe for forgetting, Mnemosyne (the Greek Goddess of memory) for remembering.

Clark found a love of mythology even before she started studying the classics. As a young girl, she studied classical archeology independently.

“So, the mythology was very real in the sense of very landscape bound,” Clark said. “It was just so inspiring.”

Now she teaches Mythology for Writers. She said the way to get kids interested in Latin is to get them interested in mythology, inspiring them with the old Greek stories. Looking to the future, Clark said she’s not looking to publish her next book anytime soon. Her goal is to focus on high-quality craft for her own poetry, submitting individual pieces. But, she and her mother are working on a mother-daughter manuscript that would include work from both of them.

The Buffalo Street Books reading event will take place at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, April 20.