The Trouble with Light [Paperback]

InThe Trouble with Light, Jeremy Michael Clark reflects on the legacy of familial trauma as he delves into questions about belonging, survival, knowledge, and self-discovery in unflinching lyrical poems. “Like you,” he writes, “I have . . . [a] history of / hardly caring for my body, of letting / whoever drink their share of me, / thinking it could cure / my fear of dirt.” Whether ruminating on intimacy, lineage, identity, faith, or addiction, Clark’s poems embody a restless, rigorous curiosity. Largely set in the poet’s hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, his portraits of interiority gracefully juxtapose the sorrows of alienation and self-neglect with the restorative power of human connection. In one of the most affectionate—and characteristically ambivalent—poems in the collection, Clark recalls, “For days, doubt struck as does lightning / across the span of night. . . . Love? If it exists, / it’s the uncertainty one feels before a thunderclap, / after the sky’s gone dark again.” A vulnerable and transporting debut,The Trouble with Lightis a vital record of how grief can endure, and how we can yet endure ourselves.
 “Heart-wrenching and eloquent, Jeremy Michael Clark’s poems grapple with the traumas of childhood poverty, an absent father, a violent stepfather, and a southern landscape that, like the speaker, also grapples with the ‘trying times’ of the past.The Trouble with Lightlays bare a bittersweet homecoming, a journey that moves slowly through painful memory but pauses to breathe on moments limned with hope. What a striking and glorious debut.”
—Rigoberto González, author ofTo the Boy Who Was Night“InThe Trouble with Light, Clark illuminates how the past not only remains present but also offers a force to keep us alive. There’s wisdom in these poems informed by experience and fuelelÓu