Jocelyn Page reviews Dis ease
and De sire by Kim Clark
Clark’s title and two well-chosen epigraphs
(the relevance of a third epigraph referring to Facebook statuses eluded this
reviewer’s grasp) suggest an authorized nose into her situation, a signpost of
permission to approach the topic and the text with an open, inquisitive
regard. And much in ‘Dis ease and De sire’ is informed by or otherwise relates to Clark’s disease,
multiple sclerosis. Many poets write of
their own illnesses in subtle, effective ways, for one example Jo Shapcott who,
in her latest collection ‘Of Mutability’ avoids naming the cancer that fuels
the poetry. Clark , however, opts to
include a fair amount of reference to MS, including some description and
terminology - ‘wait, find my cane, no,
I’m fine, / weight between my shoulder blades’ (‘Lacuna’) and ‘words worth
their weight / in myelin.’ (‘The Abduction’) However, ‘Dis ease and De sire’ feels
far from a documentation of the illness and more a manifesto for Clark’s life
with MS that, at its best, celebrates through the gusto of life
experiences -
‘Want to lick salt
from delectable hollow in the flesh
between thumb and finger on my one good hand,
to toss back tequila, brace the heel of my boot
against the dim-lit bar rail, hip-cocked
and sexy.
Savour the bite,
the zing, the punch of lime,
the slow heat down my throat’ (Nerve)
Clark’s publisher, Lipstick Press describes
the collection as ‘a literary vivisection of a particular life
displayed without pity.’ Indeed, the
‘zing’ of the author’s memory is precisely what highlights the disease, in
opposition. The desires, sensual (‘Girl
on a Mango’) and sexual (‘Night bloom’) are all the more powerful for their
understood diminishment due to illness, but they are also championed for their
own sake throughout the text.
Clark’s freedom with experimentation in terms of
layout on page (‘Flirting absolutely’ and ‘Girl on a Mango’) and lineation
(‘Untitled’, p.5) feel an appropriate manifestation of raw emotion perhaps
driven by disease and desire.
Syntactically, much of the collection feels truncated, staccato,
deprived of exactly the lyric that one might expect from such a heartfelt manifesto. Or is Clark’s desired effect a holding of the
breath, a tight-lipped study of her ‘particular life’? There are areas that could benefit from more
critical editing, such as the final, tautological line in ‘Night bloom’ -‘savour
brief thrill / of sensation / arousal’ and some puzzling punctuation choices,
with a marked over-usage of the bracket [ ] and several baffling tildes ~ that complicate
rather than add to the work. Three
‘Untitled’ poems out of nineteen in the pamphlet seems a product of haste or
oversight rather than design.
But these editing issues disappoint rather than
detract from the overall impact of Clark’s voice. Like a child, I want to ask those tricky
questions after reading ‘Dis ease and De sire’. I want to go from text to biography and learn
more about the woman who drives these themes forward.
Jocelyn Page is a poet from Connecticut living in Southeast London. Her pamphlet smithereens was published by tall-lighthouse in 2010. Her poetry has also appeared in Poetry Review, Smiths Knoll, The Rialto and Magma. She teaches English and Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College.
Jocelyn Page is a poet from Connecticut living in Southeast London. Her pamphlet smithereens was published by tall-lighthouse in 2010. Her poetry has also appeared in Poetry Review, Smiths Knoll, The Rialto and Magma. She teaches English and Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College.
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