The Trouble with Light

In The 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 vu