Deadlifts

What a brilliant concept: Deadlifts offers witty, lyrical verses, historically accurate and imaginative, in which poet Patricia Clark provides an insider’s view of other ‘Patricia Clarks’–the dead ones. These poems are even more brilliant than the concept, their endings a surprise and a good shock. Heartening and perfectly tuned, like Arcade Fire or Stephen Colbert’s monologues, these poems are what we need now–and will return to–for a long time to come. –Marilyn Kallet

In Patricia Clark’s Deadlifts, we cling to the speaker as she dives right into mortality’s maw, poring over obituaries of those who share her name. They’re strangers, yes, but the connection Clark makes is powerful. Are we anything in death beyond our names? As Clark says, We are all the same, these lives/ bracketed by dates, / these lists–who/ preceded us, who remains.‘ –Glenn Shaheen

These poems are masterful–the way Clark tucks reverberating sounds from one line to the next–pain, thanks, face–like she tucks her namesakes into their graves. So gently and with so much love. Through the breath and ink of this author Patricia Clark, the Patricia Clarks that have gone on come back again. –Nicole Walker