Charlie Clark
Photo by Sasha West
Bio
Charlie Clark’s work has appeared in New England Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, West Branch, and other journals. His book, The Newest Employee of the Museum of Ruin, will be published by Four Way Books in fall 2020. He studied poetry at the University of Maryland. He lives in Austin, Texas.
Knowing that the panelists found my work noteworthy is incredibly gratifying. However pleasurable writing can be, however crucial writing is to me as a lens through which to filter and understand the world, it is often isolated, silent work. Being awarded this fellowship justifies the years of late nights, of moments stolen at work, on the subway, the bus, the car, and anywhere else I could find to attend to my poems. The fellowship’s funding will help cover various expenses as I finish my book, The Newest Employee of the Museum of Ruin (Four Way Books, fall 2020) and continue work on two new creative projects. But more important than that is the validation and visibility that comes with being named a National Endowment for the Arts fellow. It shows that this work, imaginative work, has value in a concrete way. And, as the son of a life-long civil servant, I take great satisfaction in receiving this demonstration of our government’s continued commitment to the arts; such awards illustrate that the government values the imagination, that it is invested in the people who pursue these lines of inquiry and invention. I thank the NEA and the panelists for this tremendous show of support.
“An Apple Waiting to be Carved”
In 1892 a man awoke wishing his name meant
detour on the way to pleasure because the angel
wings he sprouted in the night, though useless,
came with the most arduous requirements
for care. His neck grew long and exhausted
always having to reach his face around to peck
away the chiggers and the grit. He went through
the streets wrapped in so many gray scarves
people mistook him for a cloud. Though he was
more than just a font of gloom. He translated
Medea and The Bacchae into French. The scripts,
while obviously the work of an amateur,
were warmly received. Other things happened,
possibly the most important being that when he died
his bones came to rest upon an English heath.
Henry Moore, age eleven, walking lost in one brown
chill of spring, already convinced he would
never adequately render a single human face,
found the bones, mistaking them for the dead
branches of a tree that had tried in its sprouting
to turn human. It was like watching fire,
Henry in his later years said of this moment.
It was like watching fire, then becoming fire.
Suddenly you could make everything as you do burn.