Thomas Clark Papers (MSS026), 1976-1981 | MSS Manuscripts

Thomas Willard Clark ( March 1, 1941- ) is an American poet, editor and biographer.  Born in Chicago, Illinois, Clark served as an usher at Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park, where he saw such renowned figures of the era as Joe DiMaggio, Bobby Hull, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Harry S. Truman. His experiences among these figures are reflected in his poems, which frequently feature these and other prominent figures from the 1950s and ’60s.

Clark attended John Carroll University in Ohio for a year before transferring to the University of Michigan, where he earned his BA in 1963. That year, at the recommendation of his former teacher Donald Hall, Clark became the poetry editor of The Paris Review, a post he held until 1973. After graduating from college, he attended Cambridge University in England on a Fulbright Scholarship and earned his MA in 1965 before enrolling at the University of Essex for two years. During this time, Clark began writing and publishing poetry in earnest.

A highly prolific writer, Clark has published dozens of poetry collections, including Truth Game (2013), Something in the Air (2010), and Light & Shade: New and Selected Poems (2006).  He is also known for his many works of prose; he has authored several novels and biographies of people such as Ted Berrigan, Robert Creeley, Edward Dorn, Jack Kerouac, and Charles Olson. He has also published literary criticism in magazines such as the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle.

The recipient of awards from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts, Clark has been an instructor in poetics at the New College of California since 1988 and lives in Berkeley, California.