Inhoudsopgave:
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from âClayfeldâs Farewell Epistle to Bob Packâ             Beneath this mellow harvest moon, I can still picture youâa boy content just fishing with his father from a ledge above a foaming stream. The flailing trout you caught is packed in gleaming ice; the pink stripe all along its side is smeared across black shiny dots that seem to shine with their own light.            Iâm sure that you can picture me with equal vividness, and though weâre not identical, there is a sense in which I am inventing you as much as youâre inventing me.  In Clayfeld Holds On, Robert Pack offers his readers a comprehensive portrait of his longtime protagonist Clayfeld, who is also Packâs doppelgänger, his alternate self, enacting both the life that the poet has lived and the life he might have lived, given his proclivities and appetites. Poet and protagonist, taken together, are self and consciousness of self, the historical self and the embellished story of that literal self.            Written with a masterly ear for rhythm, and interweaving narrative and lyrical passages, the poems recount Clayfeldâs formative memories while exploring concepts such as loyalty, generosity, commitment, as well as cosmic phenomena such as the big bang theory and black holes. Through all of this, Pack attempts to find purpose and meaning in an indifferent universe, and to explore the labyrinth of his own proliferating identity. |
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