Clayfeld holds on / Robert Pack.

Poems.

Print version record.

Bob Pack's lnvocation to Clayfeld -- Clayfeld's Encounter by the Sea -- Clayfeld Encompasses a Paradox -- Clayfeld Beholds a Miracle -- Clayfeld Attends a Seder -- Clayfeld Admonishes the Bard -- Clayfeld Defines Sublimity -- Clayfeld Goes Birding -- A Blue Heron Appears to Clayfeld -- Clayfeld's Kidney -- Clayfeld Observes a Herd of Elk -- Clayfeld Organizes His Jokes -- Confronting Clayfeld -- Clayfeld among the Fireflies -- Clayfeld Takes Flight -- Clayfeld Listens to the Aspens -- Paean for a Turtle -- Clayfeld Encircled -- Clayfeld Unresolved -- Clayfeld's Vampire Fantasy -- Clayfeld on Jury Duty -- Clayfeld Throws His Hat into the Ring -- Clayfeld's Reversal -- Clayfeld Reading by the Fire -- Clayfeld Grieves for Annie -- Clayfeld's Inheritance -- Clayfeld Addresses His Father -- Drifting and Gliding -- Clayfeld's Interpretation -- Clayfeld Thinks about Women -- Clayfeld's Pride -- Clayfeld Bedeviled -- Clayfeld's "Cogito" -- Clayfeld's Inspiration -- Clayfeld Contends with Entropy -- Star-Crossed Clayfeld -- Clayfeld in the Rain -- Clayfeld's Injury -- Humming in the Air -- Clayfeld Embellishes a Willow Tree -- Clayfeld's Farewell Epistle to Bob Pack -- Epilogue: Swan River in October -- Epilogue: Abundance.

From "Clayfeld's Farewell Epistle to Bob Pack" Beneath this mellow harvest moon, I can still picture you--a boy content just fishing with his father from a ledge above a foaming stream. The flailing trout you caught is packed in gleaming ice; the pink stripe all along its side is smeared across black shiny dots that seem to shine with their own light. I'm sure that you can picture me with equal vividness, and though we're not identical, there is a sense in which I am inventing you as much as you're inventing me. In Clayfeld Holds On, Robert Pack offers his readers a comprehensive portrait of his longtime protagonist Clayfeld, who is also Pack's doppelgänger, his alternate self, enacting both the life that the poet has lived and the life he might have lived, given his proclivities and appetites. Poet and protagonist, taken together, are self and consciousness of self, the historical self and the embellished story of that literal self. Written with a masterly ear for rhythm, and interweaving narrative and lyrical passages, the poems recount Clayfeld's formative memories while exploring concepts such as loyalty, generosity, commitment, as well as cosmic phenomena such as the big bang theory and black holes. Through all of this, Pack attempts to find purpose and meaning in an indifferent universe, and to explore the labyrinth of his own proliferating identity.

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