Music for a Wedding

In this dreamlike debut, Clark seeks the impossible ritual—a conditional that could never be fulfilled, the one “in which metaphor stops being habit/ and becomes real.” Searching for that transformational power, the poems uncover a newly emergent self. Clark’s central metaphor is an otherworldly, logic-defying, fragmented ceremony that shifts from wedding to funeral and back, replete with rites that are both hopeful and abnegating. For example, one poem directs the couple-to-be to feast, then take their pots and pans and “arrange them by the curb. If they fill with rain, your marriage will be, if nothing else, permanent.” Interspersed among the ritual poems is an account of a long train trip through America’s middle states. The train moves like an exercise in perspective: it’s slower and more personal than a plane but gives the traveler less agency and control than a car ride, so the narrator has time to consider what they’re traveling from or toward, and why. Despite the elusive and impermanent nature of the book’s setting, the body (“the unlearnable instrument is/ the body attached to us”) remains remarkably present and its beating heart is what grounds the collection and lets the reader travel along. Clark manages to be both optimistic and mournful at once; their writing embodies a complete experience. [em](Nov.) [/em]