Larry Crist reviews The Madrona Project Vol. I: A Festschrift for Clemens Starck

The Madrona Project: A Festschrift for Clemens Starck
Anthology, ISBN 978-1-7341873-5-9
Empty Bowl Press
14172 Madrona Dr.
Anacortes, WA 98223
https://www.emptybowl.org

2020, paper, 96 pages, $16.00

The poet Clemens Starck is the first inductee celebrated in the inaugural issue of The Madrona Project—Volume one of seven anthology collections to be published over the next-however-many years at a rate of two per year; collections that will “offer the best work of poets and writers who are ‘outsiders’—who write in and out of this world.” Some sixty-two author-testimonials pay tribute to this longtime Northwestern writer who is still alive, active, and living in central rural Oregon. Everyone else calls him Clem, so I will too. And a joy it is to be introduced to Clem Starck.

A Festschrift for Clemens Starck is a wonderful tribute and introduction to this long under-recognized poet and craftsman

This handsome and celebratory book begins—ninty-six pages, large magazine-sized, no exta fat or extra blank pages, from Empty Bowl Press, out of Anacortes, Washington—with a foreword by Clem discussing a 1959 photograph of Robert Frost assuming a sermon-on-the-mount position, holding court outside beside a large rock at the Breadloaf Writing Conference in Vermont. Clem is seated at Frost’s feet, lighting a cigarette besides Anne Sexton. Also pictured, with his back to us, is George Baker, curator and last-minute stand-in for Theodore Roethke, who is credited by Clem for having spurred him on to write. Clem had shown up on a whim, a scruffy twenty-something, and was pulled into this photo apparently for his bohemian beatnik presence. At some point during the conference Baker cornered Clem to ask what kind of writing the young man did, at which point Clem answered, none. “Well then, maybe it’s time you began,” was Baker’s response.

The Festschrift gets underway with an eight-poem sampler from the featured poet. We learn a great deal about Clem through these poems which are from his collection Cathedrals & Parking Lots, also from Empty Bowl—which I plan to order from my local bookstore. The eight poems establish Clem’s blue-collar workingman cred and authentic down-to-earth rich voice; and we learn through them and the testimonials that follow, that Clem is a well-traveled veteran, a skilled tradesman, loves the Red Sox, and taught himself Russian so as to read Dostoyevsky and Chekov in their original language. He has a poem, not among those included in this book, called “Learning Russian on Company Time.” 

What are among the Clem Starck poems included in this book are poems brilliantly constructed, poems you’ll want to read and reread to embrace their complex simplicity and succinct no-fat syntax. 

This from his poem, “NIAGARA CYCLO-MASSAGE”:

I didn’t confide in Tommy—he
was proud of his job. 
“This is my office!” he’d say, with arms flung out 
and a shit-filled grin, 
standing at the intersection of the two aisles 
in a discount department store. 

This is from REGARDING THE ECLIPSE:

My ambitions were nebulous at best. 
All I ever wanted was to be a glassblower 
or a wood carver 
or failing that, a utility infielder. 
A career in the Foreign Service 
looked promising once, but I couldn’t feature myself 
in formal attire
on a balcony overlooking the capital . . .
What would I be doing there? 
Serving cocktails
to the Peruvian attaché’s voluptuous wife?

 And this from REMODELING THE HOUSE:

 The next step was 
to tear down the dormer 
some half-assed handyman cobbled together,  
ruining the lines of this old house,
and build it back again 
proper.  

. . . . 

The poem ends a few lines later: 

 I honor the man who taught me 
the soul is a house
and you build it, 
                                joining the wood,
driving the nails home.

These are wonderfully rich, vibrant poems that immediately make me want to soak up more abundant homespun wisdom and story. We learn from this sampling, with weighty titles such as WHAT WE ARE DOING, DISMANTLING, and REMODELING THE HOUSE, the kind of man, artist and craftsman, Clem Starck is.

The book continues on with some sixty-plus testimonials, rich in anecdote, revealing Clem’s philosophy, for whom building projects and poem construction are not very far apart. We learn the method for his writing on the job, Clem’s ability to compartmentalize a poetic line and work on it throughout the day—playing with it in his mind, finding the next line and the one after—that is an enviable trait. If it were any good he’d claim to remember it later and write it down, having constructed the entire thing in his mind before committing himself to paper. I’ve heard of poets who can work this way and I remain in awe of this kind of mental duality. It is a gift from the poet gods. Big construction sites (where Clem worked) aren’t readily known as idyllic nor conducive safe writing zones amidst the ever present cacophony of drills, blades, hammers—where “Watch out for that load” may be the last words one hears. Clem’s poems are engagingly observational and even instructional. This is a poet with 20-20 vision and the patent wisdom to have really looked at what it is he is writing about and, then, make us see it how he wants it to be seen. 

The first half of this anthology is mostly written by Northwest authors, and is most successful when they analyze, in particular, Clem’s first eight poems. Their critical powers dissipate somewhat the further they move away from the poems onto discussing other pieces not included. Reading the first half was when I’d turn back and read Clem’s discussed poems numerous times with these excellent critiques in mind. There’s also an array of anecdotal affections as well as tribute poems to Clem from his many friends and colleagues—that include numerous writers that readers of this review will recognize, and, I suspect, some of whom will find themselves fodder for future Festschrifts. 

And fear not. By the book’s end we return to a half-dozen more recently written poems by Clem, as well as recent photographs of the semi-retired carpenter and working poet touring Europe with pals in 2018—back when it was still safe to travel. Among these is one of Clem pictured proudly standing beside the cabin-study he constructed next to his home in rural Oregon. 

One wants to spend time with this man. Were I to personally know and hang out with Clem I’d want to study him carefully before making any idle chat. I’d hate to interrupt whatever writerly flow that could be occurring on his part. 

A Festschrift for Clemens Starck is a wonderful tribute and introduction to this long under-recognized poet and craftsman, and I’m looking forward to tracking down more of his work in the near future.

Larry Crist has one collection of poems Undertow Overtures (ATOM Press, 140 pages), and a second collection, stories and poems, Alibi for the Scapegoat (260 pages, pending sometime in 2021). Currently Larry lives in Trinidad, California, and previously to this, Seattle, London, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia, where he attended Temple University earning an MFA in theatre. Larry also has lived in numerous areas in both England and California. He has been widely published.