Choose Lethe: Remember to Forget by Carolyn Clark

Carolyn Clark was born in Ithaca, NY and often lived abroad. She studied Classics at Cornell, Brown and Johns Hopkins (diss. Tibullus Illustrated: Lares, Genius and Sacred Landscapes, Carolyn Clark Breen, UMI Press, 1998) and currently lives and writes in the Finger Lakes region.

PRAISE:

With sharp, careful focus, Carolyn Clark guides our gaze over the shoulder of a woman who stands in front of a mirror after a bath; she flicks her hand and “a thousand faces [are] born” from the drops that land on the misty mirror before her. An entire house is “mumbling with flowers,” a twig shakes off its burden of snow, and a girl takes thoughtful care her horse does not feel the cold sting of the bit against its tongue in the winter air. Clark takes ownership of her writing in the second poem, “An Introduction: I am a Writer,” and through her persistent and bold voice we learn to celebrate each drop of water on the mirror, each twig that snaps in attention to a prior state, each oat that makes its successful way into the horse’s soft mouth.

–Abby N. Lewis, author of Reticent