Dear Mr. Powell,

Thank you for posting this!

JDJ

Hi D.A.,

Dale Smith has been trying to raise money for Tom Clark. I quote from Dale's blog:

Tom Clark needs your help. He is stranded with no salary and no medical insurance to cover costs due to a recent stroke. He also needs funds for medications to aid in the recovery of his wife, Angelica Clark, from surgery on her hip.

After 25 years on the faculty of the New College of California’s Poetics Program, payment on his salary and his insurance was abruptly stopped when the school came under scrutiny of federal and state auditors last fall.

Tom Clark has been an important voice in postwar American poetry since the 1960s. For a decade he was the poetry editor for The Paris Review. His many books appeared with Black Sparrow for nearly thirty years, and his biographies of Jack Kerouac, Charles Olson, and Edward Dorn have provided essential perspectives on the lives of these New American authors. He is a passionate and devoted teacher who deserves far greater recognition for his services to American poetry communities.

Tax deductible donations to the Clarks can now be made payable to: "Giorno Poetry Systems, " with "Tom Clark Fund" in the memo. Checks should be sent to:

Giorno Poetry Systems
222 Bowery
New York, N. Y. 10012

GPS is non-profit 501 (c) (3) foundation.

It's good that we keep remembering Etheridge. He came to Syracuse when I was a student there. A few memories, one is of his reading his poem "Ilu, the Talking Drum". Large sections of the poem read: kah-doom/kah-doom-doom/kah-doom/kah-doom-doom-doom.

This is why readings, I suppose, have their significance (recently I heard Louise Gluck talking about how she hates giving/going to readings, and sometimes I get crotchety about them too). But you need to hear those kah-dooms, or else they don't hit you. Those lines are what I most remember.

Also, I remember hemming and hawing around a question, until Etheridge paraphrased: "are you asking me if I think drugs enhence creativity?" And he hemmed and hawed around his answer, which was, basically, no.

In those years I was hoping, of course, the answer would be yes.

But I do not think Etheridge was complete aboard the wagon of conformity. Our workship with him was to be held at my apartment, and he pulled up, late, outside in a cab, and our teacher-the-famous-poet went out to speak with him. His woman-partner had been in a car crash, he said, and he had to fly home. And sped away in the cab.

But he actually stayed in town for a while, holed up somewhere. I think the demon was female in this case.

Also, this is shocking news about Tom Clark. Every writer's nightmare.

No, every American's nightmare. We need Universal health care now.