Cathedrals & Parking Lots: Collected Poems by Clemens Starck

Featured in American Life in Poetry

In his early twenties, Clemens Starck dropped out of Princeton and decided to take responsibility for his own education — to read deeply, travel widely, and write poems with the precision and plainspoken-ness of the Chinese masters. Over the decades, he also kept his mind clear by making a living with his hands.

Cathedrals & Parking Lots represents the work of a lifetime — poems of memorable clarity and substance based on actual experiences, whether standing lookout on the bow of a freighter, dismantling houses for a living, building a freeway overpass, or traveling to Russia and studying the language. Composed in the cadences of everyday speech, Starck’s poems have the functional beauty of a Shaker chair — every word, every line, very image belongs.

“Clemens Starck is an essential plainspoken poet of work.”

— Dana Jennings, New York Times

Release date: November 15, 2018

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