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David Clink is a poet of many voices. He has a sense of humor
dry enough to whither cactus and the greatest deadpan delivery
I have ever seen. But his genius is that he doesn’t feel compelled
to stay funny. All around him he sees biting humor and
heartbreaking sadness mixed together in swirls of an emotional
sundae. He chronicles these swirls and contrasts with brilliance
and empathy, with sweetness and nuts.
There is another dichotomy in David’s work: the spoken versus
printed. As a featured reader David Clink is a performance
artist who imbues his poetry with energy, sensitivity, wit, clarity, and stomach-aching laughter. Then he is left with the
unenviable task of trying to capture all of that in black and white. That he so often succeeds is another sign of his genius.
In this collection David’s manic
energy is perhaps most obvious
in "Death Plays a Fiddle." David has taken exceptionally
strong images for the ingredients of his emotional sundae,
but instead of gently mixing them in a parfait glass, he has
thrown them in the blender and pressed puree. The result is
breathtaking.
I don’t know which poem will cause you to laugh out loud
against your will; humors vary. But I know that one poem will
leave you reeling, and one will make you stare thoughtfully into
space, and one will provoke a trip through memory.
David Clink’s four voices, funny, sad, spoken, written, all come
together in "The Rutabaga Poet," a poem full of awful puns best
heard out loud, smoldering sexuality, sorrow, and the ambience
of a poetry reading. It allows the reader to compare David’s
view of pastoral themes and compare them to, well, The
Rutabaga Poet.
If you know David, or have at least read
extensively from his
work, you are not surprised that this collection of pastoral
poems refuses to stay in the country. In fact, it ends by taking
the reader on a trip around the world. I hope you enjoy the
journey. And I hope you hear David read his poetry in person;
it will change forever how you view his printed work.
by Herb Kauderer ©2002
from: Come-on from the Horse on 7th Avenue,
Lancaster, New York
September 6, 2002
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