Product Description
Tom Clark's collection of short fiction, The Last Gas Station, is in two contrasting parts. It opens with 23 very short prose piecesamusingly surreal California vignettes, some no longer than a page, peopled by denim-clad cowgirls, itinerant lover boys, Martin Heidegger, Boris Pasternak, Muslim college students, Vietnam vets, Ty Cobb, Ted Berrigan, and a great dinosaur poet of the Jurassic period. These are followed by the novella "Incident at Basecamp," an odd matter-of-fact account of a close encounter between a young married couple and a spindly, three-toed, mind-reading extraterrestrial somewhere deep in the Rocky Mountain wilderness.

"Clark is versatile," wrote the Los Angeles Times; he's "a poet turned sportswriter turned novelist" whose range is brilliantly showcased by this substantial collection. The opening sketches are playful and delightful, but "in the tradition of 'biggest is best,' The Last Gas Station closes with a wallop: 'Incident at Basecamp' [is] a sturdy science-fiction novelette." ... Read more

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With The Spell, Tom Clark gives us a Romance for the new millennium - a wildly funny poetic novel about the survival of medieval chivalric codes in a toxic-shocked postmodern world.

Our hero is Big Jesus Toomer, a messianic Great Plains prophet and former high-school football star. His fair maiden is Nivene, an edgy, spooky honkytonk chanteuse, "a fluttering butterfly / flung flimsy-winged from a funnel cloud / to beguile that blundering knight /into comical questing hexhood." When Nivene mysteriously disappears, our hero embarks upon a great rescue - a magical, timeless journey into the Dark Wood, not on the back of a noble steed but behind the wheel of a banged-up black pickup truck. The Wood is full of dangers: poisoned lakes, mechanical animals, reeking factories, fundamentalist elders, and screeching, sexy witches who broadcast a mad and maddening music from their secret shacks. If you squint, it all looks uncomfortably like today's America.



"Clark certainly casts a spell," writes Barbara Hoffert in the San Francisco Chronicle. "His work can be seen as a social fable targeting the mind-numbing incantations of contemporary society; as a heroic quest for love and purification; as a cautionary tale about political control; as a treatise on ecological disaster; as an ironic science-fiction send-up; and as a meditation on free will - all told in the language of a skilled poet." The final effect is "haunting . . . expansive . . . startling." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Nice in a Twisted way
This is not the book to read if you don't like modern prose and poetry.And, don't be fooled, the romance is not a lovey-duvey sort.THis book is all about the language, more so than the story.

hey, wow, oh
the best, the only, the one. ... Read more

Product Description
In Tom Begert-Clark's book, "Rosie John Doesn't Live Here Any More - One Family's Journey In Eldercare," readers will become companions on the wonderful, heartwarming, emotional and often humorous journey as Tom and his family moved from the role of white collar professional to personal caregiver. These are "stories for the journey" that include practical and emotional tips that will help anyone who must embark on a similar path. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Must-read for all caregivers!
If you have ever had to care for a loved one, no matter the circumstances, this book is a must-read!I was touched by Tom's descriptive and humorous style...one minute I was laughing and the next I was crying.In a very special way, Tom makes his readers a part of his family's journey and gives a unique perspective on caregiving.

Tears & laughter
Once I started to read Rosie John, I couldn't put it down.It brought tears to my eyes, and at times I was laughing out loud. It brought back so many memories of my childhood.

A richly woven story for all families or those caring for the aging
The author shares poignant stories of joy, guilt, grief, and the importance of continuing a legacy of memories.He paints an endearing and honest portrait of his family, allowing a glimpse into the this very personal journey many of us share. "Rosie John" is an easy read with "laugh out loud" moments.This book is a sure source of encouragement and guidance for anyone in the eldercare journey. A great resource to have in your family library.

A tenderand loving journal about caring for aging parents.
A tender and loving journal of the many emotional phases that we as children go through caring for our aging parents.The book is an easy read as Tom shares his experiences that many of us can relate to.The book brings great comfort knowing we "baby boomers" are not alone and there are many resources to guide us.

Uplifting
This book was wonderful. It took you on a journey of laughter, tears, and sadness - much like life. If you ever wanted to see into the future of what life will be like with your aging parents, this is the book. It was an enlightening and touching story. Loved every minute and an easy read. ... Read more

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Tom Clark's Like Real People is a voyage into autobiography, one poet's attempt to "tell his own life," first in poetry, then in straightforward, unadorned prose.

The book opens with a series of unrhymed sonnets, each a lyrical snapshot from Clark's not-unhappy Catholic boyhood on the west side of 1940s Chicago: schooldays, the Field Museum, pulp magazines, winter storms, ball games, the deli pastry counter. As the poet grows older, snapshots give way to narratives in verse: episodes of family history "torn from an old album"; high school and college memories; a portrait of the poet and painter Joe Brainard, Clark's contemporary and an exemplar of selfless artistic devotion; and scenes from the life of the husband, father, and the "superannuated boy" the poet has become at age fifty. The book concludes with a sixty-page prose memoir called, after Rousseau, "Confessions": it is like a prose tracery that sets all the glittering verse that has come before into a new pattern. It is also, in its closing pages, a remarkably candid and un-self-pitying portrait of a modern freelance writer, one whose scrapping Irish family character (cussedness, energy, reckless habits of living, cultural defiance, inability to "play well with others") has led him into economic marginality and unremitting toil ("Grub Street has never had a retirement plan"). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Tom Clark does it again way to go!
Each poem is a boffo statement of realtalk feelings, unadulterated wha? I'm stoked to the bone by dear Tom's truthtalk, we love you baby! Most readers don't know that Tom Clark once fought for the North AmericanFeatherweight title, losing by TKO in the 4th round, and that he playedHamlet on the New York stage!He is most definitely our soul hero, numberone. We never shop spamazon, but if we did we'd buy this book! ... Read more

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Perhaps one of the only books of poetry in the 90's that just goes ahead and says what it has to say. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Clark's White Thought is a master work
A groundbreaking book from a living master of poetry, White Thought is an extended meditation on mortality and loss.Although Tom is not all that impressed with Lou Reed, this book resonates on a similar level as the album Magic & Loss.It is simultaneously poignant and hopeful, with tight, brilliant music playing against the capital 'M' meaning of the poems themselves.Perhaps one of the only books of poetry in the 90's that just goes ahead and says what it has to say. ... Read more

Product Description
Published to mark the poet's fiftieth birthday, this is a landmark book in Tom Clark's oeuvre: a selection from his first quarter century of writing, from songs of innocence published when he was twenty-five ("Lake Life, I want to take a bath/ In you and forget death") to lines reflecting the disappointments and compromises of middle age ("While everything external/ dies away in the far off/ echo of the soul/ still there's a mill wheel turning/ . . . / by some distant stream/ a note of peace/ in a life which/ will never be peaceful").

The book is divided into two parts: the generous "New Poems, 1986 1991," which collects recent lyrics mourning the passing of time, the trials of insomnia, the sad politics of poetry, and the sadder poetry of politics; and "Dark Continent, 1965 1986," Clark's judicious winnowing of his earlier work (on love, baseball, classicism, jazz, physics, trout kills, popular culture, and Catholic-Zen-antinomian mysticism). Between the two comes a ferocious prose poem, "Diary of Desert War, 1990-1991," an account of the first Bush's Middle East war written in the terse, telegraphic style of the Times Square news zipper - that is, of a news zipper in the hands of a surrealist op-ed poet. ... Read more

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"Karma," writes Tom Clark, "simply means that you don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing." Existencea.k.a. "getting through to tomorrow"simply means "that your left hand wouldn't want to know anyway." Cracked consciousness vs. the crazy subconscious, fractured karma vs. our chipped, sad, shopworn existencethese are the dynamics underlying this rich and varied collection of lyrics.

Here are light-hearted nature poems chronicling a Pacific Coast cold snap, affectionate satires of the California brand of Zen Buddhism, and, in a pronounced shift of tone, a series of moving elegies for Robert Duncan, Delmore Schwartz, Hart Crane, and Jean Genet. Best of all, here is one of Clark's matchless biographies in verse: a short double life of English music-hall great George Formby (1904 1961), master of the ukulele and the double-entendre, and the onetime professional clog-dancer Beryl Ingham, Formby's wife, agent, manager, muse, and tight-fisted Colonel Parker.

"There is beauty and humor here," said Library Journal, "and an exquisite eye for detail." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good Stuff overall
Tom Clark once again gives us some good poems. He starts off the book with basic poetry and ends with a thirty page or so story consisiting of one characters life. Overall this book is good but not recommended for a beginner of Tom Clark's work ... Read more