The Madrona Project: A Festschrift for Clemens Starck gathers testimonials from a range of poets, scholars, laborers, artists, collaborators, and friends: long-standing Starck readers, they contribute reactions, personal histories, and appreciations of poems that affected them deeply or brought about a change in their lives.

Empty Bowl, 2020 ISBN: 978-091288-775-3

Fest·schrift| ˈfes(t)ˌSHrift | (also festschrift) noun (plural Festschriften) | - a collection of writings published in honor of a scholar, a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the honoree's colleagues, former pupils, and friends.

Available from Empty Bowl.

In his early twenties, Clemens Starck dropped out of Princeton and decided to take responsibility for his own education—to read deeply, travel widely, and write poems with the precision and plainspoken-ness of the Chinese masters. Over the decades, he also kept his mind clear by making a living with his hands.

Cathedrals & Parking Lots represents the work of a lifetime—poems of memorable clarity and substance based on actual experiences, whether standing lookout on the bow of a freighter, dismantling houses for a living, building a freeway overpass, or traveling to Russia and studying the language. Composed in the cadences of everyday speech, Starck’s poems have the functional beauty of a Shaker chair—every word, every line, every image belongs. —Empty Bowl

“Clemens Starck is an essential plainspoken poet of work.” —Dana Jennings, New York Times

“Starck has a faultless ear and an admirable concision. He also has a quietly devastating wit and a sharp eye for the foibles in our society.” —Carolyn Kizer, Judge for the Oregon Book Award

“[Starck’s] poems are meditations—done with a painter’s light touch—about maintaining spiritual and mental balance in all aspects of living, and they have a distinctly Asian cast of thought and utterance reminiscent of the Chinese sage poets and Japanese Zen masters” —Morton Marcus, San Jose Metro

"Durable Goods contains six thoughtful and insightful essays by Erik Muller in which he explores the work of six Oregon poets: Richard Dankleff, Barbara Drake, Kenneth O. Hanson, Paulann Petersen, Clemens Starck, and Lex Runciman. A photo of the poet, a folio of the poet’s poems, and a bibliography of the poet’s work accompany each essay. Read individually, the essays provide an in-depth look into the work of their respective authors. Read together, the essays add to the existing knowledge of Oregon poetry, providing a richer understanding of the writing in the Pacific Northwest region. The book is beautifully designed by the award-winning Jonathan Greene." [from Mountains & Rivers Press]

“This collection reads as such a book should—like an old friend come back from a lifetime of travel, sitting across the table from you, connecting the stars into their myriad constellations. The adventure here, of course, is to turn a mirror onto the region, to go deep and local, to see how such connections—and disparities—create their meanings and mythologies. In some ways poets are borderless creatures, and in many ways they are harnessed to their times and geographies. Durable Goods exists in the hinterland between the global and regional, and such a big-hearted and sincere assessment of our literature deserves to be celebrated long into the night.” —Michael McGriff

“If you’ve never felt the delicious shock of discovering in the work of an unsung poet a small masterpiece, this book is for you.” —John Witte

"Poetry presents the thing in order to convey the feeling. It should be precise about the thing and reticent about the feeling, for as soon as the mind responds and connects with the thing the feeeling shows in the words: this is how poetry enters deeply into us. If the poet presents directly feelings which overwhelm him, and keeps nothing back to linger as an aftertaste, he stirs us superficially; he cannot start the hands and feet involuntarily waving and tapping in time, far less strengthen morality and refine culture, set heaven and earth in motion and call up the spirits!"— Wei Tai  [eleventh century]

Read the poem "Indianapolis" from Old Dogs, New Tricks.

EARLIER BOOKS

Clemens Starck's first book of poems, Journeyman’s Wages, received the 1996 Oregon Book Award as well as the William Stafford Memorial Poetry Award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association.

louis simpson

"The poetry of Clem Starck is an American Works and Days.... This is the kind of poetry Whitman called for: an expression of the individual— original, moving, refreshingly unacademic." —Louis Simpson

jim harrison

 "Some truly extraordinary poems here. Easily, gracefully, right up there with the best work being done today."— Jim Harrison

carolyn kizer

"This is a marvelous book....Starck has a faultless ear and an admirable concision. He also has a quietly devastating wit and a sharp eye for the foibles of our society."— Carolyn Kizer

Journeyman's Wages is written with the precision of a skilled craftsman. Whether Starck writes about pouring concrete, butchering rabbits, studying Chinese, or confronting questions from his young son, his poetry speaks in precise, clear language rooted in mind and body.

Read the poem "Railroad Crossing" from Journeyman's Wages.

In this unusual book, Oregon poet and carpenter Clemens Starck recounts in verse and in prose his involvement with Russia and the Russian language. "What began as a joke," writes Starck in the prologue, "soon became an obsession." Poems written during and around his two trips to Russia in the 1990's alternate with brief commentaries providing the background and context from which the poems arose.

Read the poem "Lenin's Typewriter" from Studying Russian on Company Time.

eileen duncan, salmon bay review

"The poems of Clemens Starck are refreshing and wonderful to read. There is no excess of language and no academic posturing; these poems are crafted with a subtlety of form and a precision that are the hallmarks of fine architecture."— Eileen Duncan, Salmon Bay Review

Morton Marcus, San Jose Metro

"His poems are meditations—done with a painter's light touch—about maintaining spiritual and mental balance in all aspects of living, and they have a distinctly Asian cast of thought and utterance reminiscent of the Chinese sage poets and Japanese Zen masters."  —Morton Marcus, San Jose Metro

Read the poem "Tulips" from China Basin.

carolyn kizer

"I have been crazy about Clem Starck's poetry ever since I read it a few years ago while picking him as the winner of the Oregon Book Award. I'm not alone in particularly cherishing poems by people who work with their hands. Carpenters, printers, and factory workers are a fresh and vital antidote to the myriad of academic poets. Cheers for Clem!"— Carolyn Kizer

Read the poem "On the Hook in Manila" from Traveling Incognito.

paul hunter

"Medieval cathedrals are unsigned wonders, built deliberately and reverently—built to last. But so, Starck might argue, are freeways. With the mindset & logic of the building trades coupled with a curiosity touching far-flung languages and cultures, Clemens Starck spots the odd signature set in concrete underfoot, or the anonymous soaring camber of an overpass. The whimsical, sorry and radiant results of an effortful life converge in this ramble where his timely, focused practice offers unexpected gifts—and laughs. Starck's explanation of a scaffold, as "a makeshift platform / from which to contemplate / impermanence" would do Wittgenstein proud. In his hands we savor this ongoing world as a mostly orderly but sometimes haphazard creation, fashioned of whatever came to hand & to mind."— Paul Hunter

Read the poem "Building Scaffold" from Rembrandt, Chainsaw.

getting it straight, audio CD

Recorded live in Cannon Beach, OR, on December 9 - 12, 2012 and April 15 - 17, 2013.

with music by Jon Broderick and Jay Speakman,

The poems on this disc are from the following books by Clem Starck: Journeyman's Wages (Story Line Press, 1995), China Basin (Story Line Press, 2002), Traveling Incognito (Wood Works, 2004), Rembrandt, Chainsaw, (Wood Works, 2011).

Listen to Clem Starck read "Ammo Ship" from Getting It Straight.