Cathedrals & Parking Lots: Collected Poems

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, every image belongs.