Book Reviews
Geese
in
the
Fog
by
Sylvia
Storla
Clarke
Collection
of
selected
poetry
from
seven
decades
of
work.
"A Chico poet touches the earth and looks to heaven: the poems are accessible, intermingling joy and faith and fun and, well, physics, They are carefully crafted, the product of a lifetime, but they are not (what I would have expected) nostalgic ...
"The land and those who work it are central in Geese in the Fog, and Clarke delights in framing new perspectives, such as a poem about amorous blades of grass. She also surprises in her 'scientific' poems ...
"Clarke celebrates life, an as a kid who has great dreams of becoming a movie star ('after he gets his incisors out of braces') to a couple leaning close together ('pawns of gravity') to a farm mother ('With weathered hands she grasps each passing day.').
" 'Grandmother at the Circus': 'Today I'm told that I am ninety-three/ that I have but to knit complacently/ as suits the old./ But, circus bands are playing,/ lions roaring, clumsy wagons swaying/ on wheels of gold!' The poem ends: 'If circuses would not go by,/ it would be easier to die.' " --Dan Barnett, Chico Enterprise-Record
