Self-Portrait with a Million Dollars

Patricia Clark''s poems immerse the reader in the living world through the quality of her attention and appreciation. There''s hard-won intelligence here. We see it in people sharing a meal and being especially kind to each other after a suicide: lots of please and thanks / as we handed food around / basket of steaming bread / for buttering. Always, there is a deep understanding of our interconnections, as in the lovely and evocative final stanza of "Near the Tea House at Meijer Japanese Garden," now tracing a pale blue vein / under the skin like a leaf''s midrib. We would do well to take Patricia Clark''s guidance: The charge: note what is here, what departs.

--Ellen Bass, Indigo