How to Communicate embraces new linguistic possibilities that emanate from Clark's unique perspective and his connection to an expanding, inclusive activist community. Amid the astonishing task of constructing a new canon, the poet reveals a radically commonplace life. He explores grief and the vagaries of family, celebrates the small delights of knitting and visiting a museum, and, once, encounters a ghost in a gas station. Counteracting the assumptions of the sighted and hearing world with humor and grace, Clark finds beauty in the revelations of communicating through touch: "All things living and dead cry out to me / when I touch them."
A rare work of transformation and necessary discovery, How to Communicate is a brilliant debut that insists on the power of poetry.