Pink by Dallie Clark

There is tenderness here in the work of Dallie Clark. Her poems are essentially feminine as she discovers the colors in the world, her words pushing up “through morning dirt like daylilies.” See through her eyes as a lover lifts “a piece of half-mooned tangerine” to her lips. One is left in a lacy embrace with vivid images to cling to, images that stay with the reader long after the poem is finished, “rooted deeply, words in dark red.”

–Karla Morton, 2010 Texas Poet Laureate

Dallie Clark’s poems in Pink are, quite simply, charming: genuine, understated, honest. These poems are never overblown, overwrought, or overcooked; rather, they are created with the delicacy of a soufflé, delicately balancing the inner with the outer, the intangible with the tangible. There is a calm elegance to these poems—a refreshingly sincere, unpretentious voice. The lines and images are sharp, clean, and indeed photographic, as when you are taken into that witching hour of a sleepless night, as in the poem “Psalm at 3 a.m.,” and find yourself sitting in a waiting chair in a darkened theater where you have no choice but to “review a film of your life taken by a faceless technician…a tape devoid of soft focus lenses or special effects…” This collection of poems will make you want to reread, to taste again and again the delicate substance of Dallie Clark’s work.
–Andrea Witzke Slot, author of To find a new beauty (Gold Wake Press, 2012)

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]