Philip F Clark (00:00)
He stopped and asked if I could spare some change. I thought, yes, I could spare so much. Another job, a new home, other clothes, better weather, more chances, less pain. Yes, I could spare some change.

David J Bauman (00:17)
You're listening to In Three Poems. I'm your host David J. Bauman. And recently I spoke to dear friend and fellow poet Philip F. Clark, the author of The Carnival of Affection, published by Sibling Rivalry Press. And really, I just want to get right to sharing that conversation with you.

David J Bauman (00:36)
Philip, I am just so thrilled to have you here with me on this podcast. those that are on video, we're going to be reading a couple of poems from this book that I'm holding up right now called The Carnival.

Philip F Clark (00:41)
As am I, David

David J Bauman (00:50)
of affection. one of the cool things about this podcast is I have gotten to talk with old friends and meet new friends, people that I've never had a chance to talk poetry with before. And it's been a delightful mix So how do you and I know each other?

Philip F Clark (01:06)
We were separated at birth.

And before I left the maternity ward, I winked at you and said, I'll see you in a few years.

David J Bauman (01:17)
I remember we had that joke about a twins separated by a decade and it was really hard on mom. But she was a trooper.

Philip F Clark (01:23)
Thanks

No, KGB Bar with Voices of Poetry and Neil Silberblatt, I believe was the first. We read together at the Cornelia Cafe where I also met, I don't know if it was on that night, uh, the wonderful Jennifer Franklin. And then we got connected in a few other ways.

David J Bauman (01:36)
Yeah, that was it.

Yeah!

Yeah, the Cornelia Street Cafe was one, but I remember us having at least one beer in the Julius Bar, the oldest gay bar in the city. make sure I saw that. But yeah, then I read with you at the Bureau of General Services Queer Division this book, the release of this book.

Philip F Clark (01:59)
Yes, we did.

think it was

your wonderful chap That was a great night and a wonderful book launch with someone who had become a good friend and a poet that I loved. That was a great evening, I think, for both of us. We had a lot of fun.

David J Bauman (02:10)
had you reach out to me.

Yeah, that was so much fun.

That was a delightful evening.

Yeah, we got to get back there for, know, so if you're having a reading at the Bureau of General Services, let us know. Philip and I will show up. So that was for the Carnival of Affection. It was from Sibling Rivalry Press. And I really did like Brian Borland's idea there of having people open up with somebody else that had something coming out. I thought that was.

Philip F Clark (02:31)
I will. ⁓

Yes.

Absolutely, yes.

David J Bauman (02:49)
I love that idea of community and I think it branches out to probably even in the spirit of what I wanted to do with this podcast where I get to talk to people about their poems. I get a chance to read one of them and takes me back to my YouTube days. also then, you know, we kind of we ask about, well, what influenced what poems were it influenced to you? Because none of this happens in a vacuum. I think, as I've said on one of the other episodes, we're kind of all swimming in that same

river of poetry and art, and we can't help but be influenced by poets of the past and even poets that we know now. And it's fun to talk about those connections. So that's what

Philip F Clark (03:25)
Yeah, you know,

it's interesting when I think about it. I was writing poems very, very young. I remember one particular class, I think I was in like fourth grade. was constantly writing poetry, but I hadn't really picked up on the world of it yet. ⁓ But then I began reading, you know, trying to read for the time.

David J Bauman (03:36)
yeah.

Philip F Clark (03:49)
W. H. Auden, certainly Sylvia Pryor, Mark Strand. And I didn't always get them, there came a point where, and I had not been a librarian yet, I had not started teaching, I hadn't even attended Fordham yet, but poetry became a much deeper aspect of my I was writing some awful things.

I was writing them and

David J Bauman (04:19)
Yeah, the first stuff you write is always bad, I think. But it's important that you're listening and reading and, and just doing it.

Philip F Clark (04:21)
and then of course...

Then

there comes a point when you're old enough and you've lived long enough and your poet who has written enough, your juvenile becomes, oh, masterful. Yeah, well, I don't want to get to 90 and perhaps have people think, oh, did you read his juvenile?

David J Bauman (04:46)
I confess, I think I destroyed some of those. They always say, keep everything. no. I got rid of some of those old, because I didn't want to die and then have somebody say, look at his early

Philip F Clark (04:52)
It's my idea.

Well, but when you,

I really think it's insightful to read the earliest work of poets, you know, because we all come to it at a particular point when we're young, usually. I mean, I feel that I didn't really come to fuller expression of poetry until I was much older. You know, I didn't publish my first book until I was 57. So, um.

David J Bauman (05:10)
Yeah. I just wanted to choose.

Yeah.

Philip F Clark (05:26)
you know, all that time of mixing and weaning and my life was at another place. I was in publishing, I became a teacher, I was a librarian. all right, and then all those other experiences led me more and more to think about the poetry I wanted to write and started to write. And

David J Bauman (05:37)
We have that in common as well.

Philip F Clark (05:48)
It comes together when it comes together, but I've always read, certainly in the past 30 years, reading poetry has always been a solace to me, as well as a teacher. You you have to read to write. You do.

David J Bauman (06:05)
I think that's kind of how you find your own voice too, doing a lot of reading and finding what resonates with you and, eventually your own thing that springs out from that. And that takes time, you know, like you said.

Philip F Clark (06:17)
Yeah, I mean,

The idea of original voice is different because so much, so many of us are writing that it can become very frightening to think, oh, I sound like this person or I sound like that person and you don't want to and yet

David J Bauman (06:24)
Mm-hmm.

Philip F Clark (06:37)
our poetry shows our influences to some degree. And that's, you know, that's often ⁓ problematic for some. I try to take each poet and poem I come to as the individual purity of just that thing that I am reading now by just this individual who I know or don't know.

David J Bauman (06:40)
Yeah, exactly.

Mm-hmm.

Interesting. So Lacrimosa is the poem that I chose of yours to read today.

How about I just jump right into it first and then we'll talk about it?

Philip F Clark (07:04)
Thank you, David.

David J Bauman (07:06)
Lacrimosa. Where I grew up, wakes were a sparring ground. Furor was the only defense to grief. Someone had to fight the rant and terror of all those flowers. That is how I remember the dead. Lone among loud voices and the odor of calla lilies and plastic chairs. Caves where a child could seek solace from black veiled arguing aunts

I played solitaire with the prayer cards until I was slapped soundly by a velvet glove. I waited for the priest to arrive. He was beautiful. I remember his cassock whispering toward me. Everyone was quiet then. I remember that. As all of us stood, I cried, not for the lonely dead, for the living who dread the sumptuous air, the unadorned smile.

the fervent prayer.

Philip F Clark (08:10)
⁓ Thank you David, that was beautiful, beautiful.

David J Bauman (08:12)
That's such

a, this is such a musical poem.

David J Bauman (08:16)
Musically, there's a lot of things I want to say, but I guess I should start with the title first. Now, I grew up in Protestant church, So I recognize we've some Latin and this has to do with the the Christ.

least, right? It alludes

Philip F Clark (08:31)
Yes,

particularly in requiems, the lacrimosa is, very often in And some of the most beautiful requiems include that, certainly. But also, I simply named the poem that because I love the idea of the word itself and the idea of what are people crying for. And you have a young

David J Bauman (08:34)
Yes.

Philip F Clark (08:58)
a young boy in a room full of adults. And so the grief is different. The child might not know and understand what grief is. he sees these people crying. And then the point where the priest comes in, everything changes for the child, you know? was my way of turning the poem to a different level, because in the end, you know, the words are...

David J Bauman (09:13)
Yeah.

Philip F Clark (09:23)
somewhat adult, he said, I cried, not for the lonely dead, for the living who dread the sumptuous air, the unadorned smile in the fervent prayer. And you would think, how could that be a child's thinking? But of course, as a man older, I'm writing this poem in memory. So the idea of the lacrimosa and what we cry for, you know.

David J Bauman (09:50)
Mm-hmm.

Philip F Clark (09:51)
whether

at the ceremony of a wake or as an adult understanding that even in childhood, there were these more adult things that are often unacknowledged. know, the sumptuous air, the priest was such a different level when he came in I recognized something was different.

And he was beautiful to my young gay mind.

David J Bauman (10:19)
you have this lovely talent with assonance and consonance and rhymes and slant rhymes between line. I you've got the where wakes were, sort of a slant rhyme with spar and solitaire, prayer, furor.

Philip F Clark (10:34)
Yeah.

David J Bauman (10:35)
All

those sounds add to that, to the music, sort of that symphony going on, even though, you you get slapped in the face, you would think that's the turn, but yeah, the real turn is when the priest comes in.

Philip F Clark (10:46)
All right, thank you for seeing those things.

David J Bauman (10:48)
that's part of the fun of this. You know, it's not necessarily, ⁓ I don't always aim to do like a serious deep dive into a close reading, but I like to look at why does it work? What makes it work? And those are some beautiful things that make it work for me.

I'm glad you said about the looking back as a kid, because I know with the book, The Cardinal of Affection, one of things about it is you have lot of maybe drawn from memory.

poems, things regarding your relationship with your father and people that you knew, but you also have a great deal of persona ⁓ poems in there What drew you to do that kind of collection? You just had a lot of that building up on your mind and...

Philip F Clark (11:19)
Yes.

Well,

it was interesting. These poems were written, you know, and this was my first book and it's already what almost seven years old. but it took me a long time to parse the sections together, what would relate and what wouldn't. And I realized many times that I was trying in some of the poems to create something out of what I remembered, but that was new, or there was a

person or an event, how might I reconstruct or reconfigure a persona that was certainly part of my experience, but I wanted it to be outside the experience I knew.

David J Bauman (12:10)
the beggars welcome is the next one from the book that you chose to read.

Anything you want to say about it before you read it or...

Philip F Clark (12:17)
This

was an actual event. I had seen this young man, seemingly homeless, on this particular corner when I was working and I would go to lunch. And ⁓ this happened and the poem came from that experience.

David J Bauman (12:20)
Okay.

Philip F Clark (12:37)
The beggar's welcome. He stopped and asked if I could spare some change. I thought, ⁓ yes, I could spare so much. Another job, a new home, other clothes, better weather, more chances, less pain. Yes, I could spare some change. He held out his hand, calloused, sooted, cracked. I groped for my wallet and I held his eyes.

still young, if half alive, as if they and his body were not the same. There were the chances he mistook, the changes on a dime, the house, the cat, the wife, or lover, the constantly put off grave. All I had was a clean last twenty. Without a thought, I handed it to him. As he gently took it,

His hand in mine, I knew. It's all we ever want, the holding. The asking is never as hard as the needing. The accepting, never as hard as the taking.

David J Bauman (13:51)
Mm. Yeah, I love that piece.

Philip F Clark (13:53)
And you know, the

aspect of so many of us every day, pass people who need something and sometimes were able to give, sometimes were able not to. But the face of this man, I saw him immediately. I saw him, I saw into him. And yet I also could see the kind of struggle he had with having to ask.

David J Bauman (14:23)
Hmm.

Philip F Clark (14:24)
And

the relief that I gave him something and the surprise that it was a 20, you know, people, but it was all I had and I just gave it to him. But when he held my hand, I really felt I could feel in looking at him as I offered that and he took it. Those small, brief, minute connections often happen.

I never saw him again on that corner. But it was a moment that affected me. It affected me very much.

David J Bauman (15:01)
Yeah.

And I don't mean to be unrealistically romantic, in the classical sense of making more of it than the cruel reality of being homeless and being on the I mean, I, I've been very fortunate,

had I not had some of the connections I had, had I been a little less lucky,

I could have easily been on the street, you know, with some some some health issues and whatnot. But there's that very practical.

You you need food, you need shelter, but also you need human touch. And in some ways there are certain levels of the being that maybe that touch for me meant even more when I read it than the $20 bill. And probably did on some level, obviously to you as well as to him.

Philip F Clark (15:36)
Absolutely.

Yes, yes it did, it did. And the title of the poem is The Beggar's Welcome. So there's not a sign of shame in that. And I didn't want to assign shame to this experience. I wanted to assign the small connection that made perhaps, and I hope, a big difference to him because it made a difference to me in not.

David J Bauman (15:52)
an interesting, no go ahead.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think

Philip F Clark (16:18)
not just giving someone something, but having seen someone.

David J Bauman (16:22)
I think a more trite draft would have called it like the beggar's lament or something like that. And there's the differences between this poem and the previous.

Philip F Clark (16:27)
Right,

Exactly.

David J Bauman (16:36)
I'm sure if I took it apart, would find some more of the music in the lines, but you were doing different things. It was very on the street, It wasn't a view back through like a child's memory and ceremony and music. I guess I think of Marie Howe's What the Living Do, where she...

Philip F Clark (16:52)
my god, extraordinary

book. Absolutely one of the most extraordinary books.

David J Bauman (16:56)
One of my favorite books of poetry ever.

And what I love about that book, I love playing with metaphor and I love playing with sound. But this in some ways to me was very Marie Howe where it was very, this is what happened. This is where it was. This is what I saw. This is what he said.

Philip F Clark (17:14)
And

David J Bauman (17:16)
And that can be very powerful.

Philip F Clark (17:17)
it was an encounter that lasted perhaps two minutes, you know? And the whole opening of the idea of can you spare some change? And I think of all the things that I would like to have or have changed,

know, it seems that the beginning of the poem is cynical, a cynical response to, you know, can you spare some change? And yet then this deeper moment of human connection happens, and it's the world is in front of you. It's very easy for us to be cynical about something. But when you're in an experience of human connection, no matter what that is.

David J Bauman (17:47)
Beautifully done, brother.

Philip F Clark (18:01)
of two different beings. Cynicism will soon go away.

David J Bauman (18:05)
So now if we make a leap to to another poet, you chose ⁓ Cavafy.

Philip F Clark (18:14)
Yes, ⁓ one of the first and to this day, truly the poet who in the smallest ways and the largest ways touches me all the time. I'm a great lover of history and I came to know so much about Greek history through Cavafy. But his intimacies and

David J Bauman (18:15)
as a poet to read.

Mm-hmm.

Philip F Clark (18:39)
the idea we have of him as a repressed homosexual, he may have been, but he was not repressed inside his own heart. And his poems to me feel like he lets us inside in places he could not let in public.

David J Bauman (18:50)
Right.

Philip F Clark (19:00)
But his poems of such intimacy and quiet moments and memory, you know, he's very often the older man looking back. And I feel that I connected that way being an older adult looking back on past lovers or, you know, past spaces. He has wonderful poems that involve the memory of spaces of which this is one and one of my favorites.

David J Bauman (19:10)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

I was going say this is definitely one, yes.

Philip F Clark (19:28)
So I love this and yes, he's still a very deep, deep influence on me.

David J Bauman (19:33)
I'd love to hear you read it.

Philip F Clark (19:36)
The afternoon sun. This room, how well I know it. Now they're renting it and the one next to it as offices. The whole house has become an office building for agents, businessmen, companies. This room, how familiar it is. The couch was here near the door, a Turkish carpet in front of it. Close by,

the shelf with two yellow vases on the right no opposite a wardrobe with a mirror in the middle the table where he wrote and the three big wicker chairs beside the window the bed where we made love so many times they must still be around somewhere those old things beside the window the bed

The afternoon sun used to touch half of it. One afternoon at four o'clock, we separated for a week only. And then that week became forever.

David J Bauman (20:46)
Ugh.

Philip F Clark (20:46)
It's a glorious poem. And you know, it was fascinating to me to wonder whether the space that he was now looking at being renovated, whether it was his old rooms or a room he had engaged to get together with this young man.

David J Bauman (20:50)
So good. And you know what?

Mm-hmm.

Philip F Clark (21:11)
But he has such a marvelous beginning of change, right? He's come to a place that he knew and remembered and was so dear to him for so many reasons, particularly beauty and eroticism of a young man. And he knows everything. In fact, in the memory that he speaks of where he says, close by the shelf with two yellow vases on the right, he goes, no opposite.

He corrects his memory as he's seeing the room in this space. And I love that. ⁓ And so he gives us this space that was invested with absolute love and ⁓ love making. And that idea of the spaces that we create, that we invest and have love in are going to change. I can, to this day,

David J Bauman (21:48)
Yeah.

Philip F Clark (22:10)
walk down the street and see the same building where I was born and raised and it's the same building but it's completely changed, know, 71 years ago. memory does that and Cavafy does that so well. He does it so beautifully to make the past part of the present through an acknowledgement that all the years...

David J Bauman (22:16)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Philip F Clark (22:36)
Even though they're gone and things have changed, I remember these wonderful things. I remember every part of that room in which we made love.

David J Bauman (22:47)
And you know, in some ways, you might think this is funny, but I got to thinking about, we mentioned earlier that we read at the Cornelia Street Cafe, not too far from the blue note in this beautiful part of the city, but so many parts, so many places had to shut down for high rents and whatnot, and that's one of them. And I got to thinking, I wonder,

Philip F Clark (23:02)
Yeah.

David J Bauman (23:13)
What's ⁓ at the Cornelia Street Cafe? Is that an office now? It's heartbreaking to think, isn't it?

Philip F Clark (23:15)
I can't go back to look. It

is heartbreaking, you know, and I'm old enough to have in New York City all these years. So every time I walk the streets, it's like I have a multiple exposure photographic memory. I see what's in front of me, but I see all the layers behind it of places that were there before.

David J Bauman (23:36)
Yeah.

Philip F Clark (23:43)
It's a strange sort melancholy experience, but are certain places I just don't want to go back to.

David J Bauman (23:49)
and you've just described.

And you've just described the poet here doing the same thing. I've read this multiple times now in preparation for our talk, but then sometimes things come to you just as you're reading at the most recent time. I'm a big lover of Frank O'Hara and him as a New York poet.

Philip F Clark (24:08)
⁓ yes, yes.

David J Bauman (24:13)
I could see if Frank O'Hara had lived longer, not been run down by a dune buggy and had made it to an older point of his life, I could see him writing a more slowed down sort of poem like this simply because of the noticing. He would talk about his I do this, I do that poems, but what he was so great at is...

Philip F Clark (24:30)
Hmm.

David J Bauman (24:37)
is bringing something alive by all the noticing of every little detail. And in this case, interesting because those details are no longer there visually, except in his mind's eye.

Philip F Clark (24:46)
Right.

Right. I think Frank today, even in his old, had he gone to an old, old age, he would have been so spry and filled with, you know, O'Hara had such an energy, such a love of the iconoclastic as well as the stable. His humor was always acknowledged with

a wry sense of... well, on to the next thing everybody.

David J Bauman (25:18)
But I could have seen him write too, like meeting somebody on the street who asks for change, says, can you spare some change? I'd love some change, Frank O'Hara might

So what are you working on now? You had mentioned,

Philip F Clark (25:30)
I mentioned, I'll be going to AWP in a couple of days. And I was very honored to be invited to submit poems to the Lily Poetry Review, which I hope to be reading those poems there, three new poems, ⁓ all about women, all about light, all about

David J Bauman (25:34)
Yeah.

wonderful.

Philip F Clark (25:50)
aspects of light and what light does to us in terms of illuminating what we know or feel about something or someone. So I'm very excited about that. And I've also started, I'm working on an essay for an anthology of writers who will be writing about Oscar Wilde in ⁓ contemporary times. So I'm very excited about that. I can't give too many

David J Bauman (26:15)
Fantastic.

Philip F Clark (26:18)
but that I've been reading constantly and strangely enough have gone again to Wilde's poetry and people just don't realize there are so many wonderful things there. We think of all his plays, the wonderful plays and the Beaumont and all that, but he was an extraordinary writer of some very beautiful poetry. So I've been investing myself with that

for me at least, the poems come when they come and I'm very glad for that. But when they come, I know it and I work through it.

David J Bauman (26:48)
Mm-hmm.

Absolutely. And I will include links in the show notes for people to get hold of this book from sibling rivalry press, because despite the pressure to publish, this is still to me, it's so sad when they say, oh, well, is there any new poetry? It's like, well, this isn't 20 years ago. It's not that long ago. COVID days and shutdown makes things seem pre 2020 as if it was a long time ago. And also, guess, oh.

Philip F Clark (27:12)
or I think. ⁓

Thank you.

Thank you so much, David. I appreciate that.

David J Bauman (27:22)
Absolutely. Thank you for being here. I can't wait till we get a chance to meet again in person. Hopefully very soon. Love you too, Philip. Thank you so much for being here. You take care.

Philip F Clark (27:26)
and we will. Yes, definitely. I love you, brother.

Thank you so much. Take care, David.

David J Bauman (27:36)
Philip's poems Lacrimosa and The Beggar's Welcome were both from his 2017 book published by sibling rivalry press. It's called The Carnival of Affection. Please look in the show notes and we'll give you a link to where you can get a hold of that book. The poem The Afternoon Sun by C.P. Cavafy read by Philip and it was originally in the city by C.P. Cavafy, collected poems and translated by Edmund Keely.

and Philip Sherrard with the translation copyright in 1975 and 1972. For updates about upcoming episodes, can follow us on Instagram, Facebook, or Blue Sky. Next week we'll be talking with Monica Prince and in upcoming episodes we'll read with poets Katie Manning, Sadiq Dzukogi Marjorie Maddox, and more. And if you're enjoying the podcast, consider leaving a review on Apple Podcast or giving us a rating on Spotify.

You can even reach out in the show notes where it says, text the show. I'd be happy to hear from you. I'm David J. Bauman, and this has been a conversation in three poems.