Notions: A Jim Clark Miscellany

Author: Jim Clark
Publisher: Rank Stranger Press
ISBN 978-1599480916
$15.00

After several years of wandering in the not unpleasant wilderness of music, bands, and folk and rock CD releases, Jim Clark returns to the printed page with this kaleidoscopic Rube Goldberg contraption of a book. Notions: A Jim Clark Miscellany, providentially published by Rank Stranger Press, is chock full of dispatches from Clark’s own "visionary south" rendered in genres ranging from the short story sequence, to personal essay and fond memoir, to scholarly analysis, to a full-length stage play, to a handful of occasional poems. There is even a new song, "One Night Late," included on a CD single.

As poet, editor, and man of letters R.T. Smith observes, "Jim Clark’s Notions is not just a book but a whole environment stocked with the flora and fauna of a life led in words."

Aware that "ours is an age that often insists on pigeonholing writers into neat compartments," as poet Jeff Daniel Marion writes in his Foreword to the collection, Clark wryly titles his Preface "The Strange Case of the Amateur Dilettante." Some appreciate such diversity, however; Appalachian poet and novelist Ron Rash says of Clark, "There is no one else in the region with such a wide range of artistic talent."

Here, in Jeff Daniel Marion’s words, is "a gracious plenty . . . like dinner on the grounds at a family reunion." Come fill your plate.

More information is available at Jim Clark’s homepage: http://home.nc.rr.com/clarkja/.