reviews of FACE OF POETRY

Posted May 22, 2005
Last Updated Jun 21, 2012
THE FACE OF POETRY:
An Anthology of 101 Poets


FOREWORD BY
RICHARD EBERHART
Pulitzer Prize winning poet

EDITED BY LaVERNE HARRELL CLARK
First director of the University of Arizona Poetry Center, author of three other books and magazine fiction, lecturer and photographer.

AND MARY MacARTHUR

Assistant Director of the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts, former editor and publisher of Gallimaufry Press and Gallimaufry Journal, and founding member of the Board of Writers' Center at Glen Echo, Maryland.


PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAITS
BY
LaVERNE HARRELL CLARK



THE FACE

OF

POETRY

What a few of the reviewers have said:

"Among my five or six top choices for the year. [It] has full page photogaphs of each poet by Clark, the editor. This is a special book, as much for the striking photographs as the poets and poetry." (Bill Katz, LIBRARY JOURNAL)

?A unique document?combining visual language with the poet?s natural field of discourse and meditation.? American Library Association BOOKLIST

"THE FACE OF POETRY collects the work and features Clark's full-page photographs of 101 poets from coast to coast....For those wishing to see their favorite contemporaries caught by a fine camera artist, as well as to enjoy many good recent poems, the collection will serve as a valuable reference for the faces of poets whose work is already known and admired and for those whose work will move you to want to know their faces, or vice versa....[It represents] the broadest cross section of regions, races and styles"
(Dave Oliphant, TEXAS QUARTERLY)

WHAT OTHERS HAVE ALSO STRESSED WITH REGARD TO CLARK'S INFORMAL PORTRAITS

"Surely LaVerne Harrell Clark is the photographer of poets in our time. THE FACE OF POETRY (note the singular, the implied unity) shines; it lives. Of all the anthologies on my shelf...,this one is special. (Victor Contoski, THREE RIVERS POETRY JOURNAL, 1980)

"Representative poems accompanied by remarkable photographs of leading poets of the past two decades (JOURNAL OF MODERN LITERATLURE)

"Clark is an award winning photographer and writer,...The photographs are strong, arresting close-ups....I can't imagine anyone interested in poetry who wouldn't find this book valuable. (Patricia Griffith, Washington, D.C. POST)

A SmaIl Press Book Club Selection that is now in its 2nd. popular printing.

Reprinted by HEIDELBERG GRAPHICS, 2 Stansbury Ct., Chico, CA 95928 (800-342-1845)(ISBN 0-918606-04-7, LC 79-17351, November 1979, 302 pp. pbk. sewn, $8.95 plus $2.00 shipping)

Books may be ordered directly or from Amaxon. Com, Baker & Taylor and all other jobbers and booksellers.

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Cover of 1st. edition of anthology

The first edition, published by Mary MacArthur's Gallimaufry Press, had a cover designed by her, which featured parts of the faces of 15 of the contributinhg poets, the parts themselves cutouts made from Clark's portraits.

Cover of THE FACE OF POETRY

The reprint of the anthology of 101 contemporary poets with a poem containing each of their self-portraits in verse beside an informal photograph by Clark is still available from Heidelberg Graphics of Chico, CA.

LaVerne Harrell Clark & her camera

Clark, then Director of the U. of AZ Poetry Center, is shown with the Rollieflex camera she was then using. She is standing before a bust of D.H. Lawrence by Jo Davidson at the first Taos conference of the D.H.Lawrence Society of North America. The photo is by David Farmer, now of El Prado, N.M., a Lawrence scholar himself and editor of a volume on Lawrence in the Cambridge University series.

William Meredith & LaVerne Clark

The photo by Clark's husband shows her and poet William Meredith, a former Librarian of Congress. It was made on one of Meredith's several visits to the Tucson Poetry Center, which he first visited with Robert Frost in 1960. He had helped the then aged Frost make his long journey out from the East to dedicate the Center. He returned again in 1962 as one of the visiting poets to be featured himself on that year's series. On his successive visits, he and the Clarks came to enjoy a long and enduring friendship.