Carolyn Clark

Carolyn Clark was born and raised in Ithaca, NY but periodically lived abroad in Italy, Switzerland and France. At Cornell she studied poetry with Archie Ammons, earned a B.A. in Classical Civilization (’79), and later completed her M.A. (Brown, ’83) and Ph.D. in Classics (Johns Hopkins, ’98), her thesis on a Roman poet (Tibullus Illustrated:  Lares, Genius and Sacred Landscapes).  While raising family in Montgomery County, Maryland, she spent 15 years teaching Classics-related courses, Latin, French, Mythology for Writers. She now enjoys living with her husband and writing in the Finger Lakes.

Her latest publication is New Found Land, a poetry collection that explores themes of resilience, self-acceptance, and how to achieve both through wandering.

Stopping to breathe, as found in New Found Land

Stopping to breathe,

you envelop me

in your breath.

I am your watermark,

thin as paper,

shear as onion skin,

two-faced yet legible

as Janus

guarding the bridge.

Poems spring from silence

and little noises

that stretch time:

afternoon bird song,

the purr of a light plane

imagined beyond

white pleated blinds

make me think –

it must be a blue sky.

My daughter completed for me

the art of butterfly kisses

that I now pass on to you.

When, like trees,

we disentangle to grow

our separate ways,

remember these silences

timbered in peace

and desire.