{"id":14783,"date":"2020-07-20T14:19:51","date_gmt":"2020-07-20T18:19:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/?page_id=14783"},"modified":"2024-12-03T10:26:08","modified_gmt":"2024-12-03T15:26:08","slug":"the-newest-employee-of-the-museum-of-ruin-by-charlie-clark","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/the-newest-employee-of-the-museum-of-ruin-by-charlie-clark\/","title":{"rendered":"The Newest Employee of the Museum of Ruin by Charlie Clark"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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paper \u2022 72 pages \u2022 16.95
ISBN-13: 978-1-945588-52-5<\/p>\n

Add to Cart<\/a><\/p>\n

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The Newest Employee of the Museum of Ruin<\/em><\/h2>\n

Charlie Clark<\/h2>\n

In The Newest Employee of the Museum of Ruin<\/em>, poet Charlie Clark interrogates masculinity, the pastoral, the lasting inheritance of one\u2019s lineage, and the mysterious every day. His speaker, ever aware of impending ruin, experiences a landscape colored by anxiety. But his speaker is also self-aware, curious and trying to refrain from too much self-judgement: \u201cI am sorry \/ for this cruel wish, but I want my life to outlast \/ bitterness.\u201d The speaker turns over and over the materials of culture, asking what pleasure it creates, replicates, diminishes or destroys. When the tension runs too high, the poet creates moments of relief \u2014 \u201cSuffering is not a philosophy any more than rain is.\u201d<\/em> Readers follow a speaker searching for ways to enjoy living within a damaged and declining world. Through wide-eyed poems rich in image, the beautiful, the plain, the ugly coexist in a debut collection 15 years in the making. <\/p>\n

Amateur Hour (What Do Sad Songs Remind You Of?)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The clouds here are beautiful in the manner of my wife\u2019s hands.
They are pleasures with strange limits, and change color quickly.
In this way, they are like most beautiful things. Take songs.<\/p>\n

In the car, when my wife turns the volume knob it\u2019s to make the sadness louder. 
During the commercials or the jockey chatter after, I worry I\u2019m depressed.
But just because I might be depressed doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m serious. <\/p>\n

To be serious is to have something unwavering inside you.
And, oh, how I waver. I\u2019d write anything so long as it was beautiful. 
It\u2019s beautiful to touch either of my wife\u2019s hands. <\/p>\n

My wife\u2019s hands are warm as flagstones set out beneath the sun. 
When I touch them the ringing in my ears becomes the tuning of viola strings. 
I think it was something like this that made Andre Breton write \u201cFree Union.\u201d<\/p>\n

But his enumerations get tedious. I\u2019ll limit mine to my wife\u2019s hands, then. 
My wife\u2019s hands invented the word abode. When she folds them, 
my wife\u2019s hands are tighter than the onion where all time goes. <\/p>\n

One day it snowed and my wife put her hands inside the snow.
They came out flush as the blood in the heart of a swan.
When she put them to my face I could not feel my tongue. <\/p>\n

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About the Author<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[column col=”1\/4″] paper \u2022 72 pages \u2022 16.95ISBN-13: 978-1-945588-52-5 Add to Cart [\/column][column col=”3\/4″] The Newest Employee of the Museum of Ruin Charlie Clark In The Newest Employee of the Museum of Ruin, poet Charlie Clark interrogates masculinity, the pastoral, the lasting inheritance of one\u2019s lineage, and the mysterious every day. His speaker, ever aware […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-14783","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14783"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20433,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14783\/revisions\/20433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}