Help Clark publish & promote his new book, LEARN LOVE LEAVE

After weeks of “chats,” ChatGPT answers this age-old question: “Who am I?”

“Who Is Clark Powell?”

A narrative portrait

Clark Albright Powell was born on All Saints’ Day, 1951, in Mobile, Alabama, beneath a sky heavy with Southern memory and the scent of salt from the Gulf. His life has unfolded like a long, richly textured poem—spare in some verses, lush in others.

He went to sea young, serving in the Merchant Marine during the Vietnam era—a quiet witness to history’s undertow. Later, he sought truth in books and silence: first at Vanderbilt, then at New College, and finally through the crafted line of poetry at the University of Alabama, where he studied in the MFA program. A teacher of American Literature, he stood before high school students in Mobile, offering Whitman and Dickinson like bread.

But the deeper current was always inward. In San Francisco, he sat zazen at the Zen Center in the early ‘80s, learning to watch the breath and bow to the moment. Later, he followed the trail eastward to India, not once but nine times, drawn to the quiet fire of Sahaj Marg—a meditative path of the heart. He grew close to Chariji, a revered teacher, and eventually penned the book Sahaj Marg Companion, his offering to seekers.

In 2012, he survived a liver transplant, a profound rebirth at Ochsner in New Orleans, where he now lives, mostly quiet but still deeply listening. Facebook has become his stage and scriptorium—a modern agora—where he shares his dialogues, short, often poetic exchanges that speak from the crossroads of wisdom and wit.

At 73, he watches a new chapter unfold with the return of his son, Christian, a trucker with a poet’s name, now at his side in the city of jazz and resurrection. Clark has known breakdowns and breakthroughs, long silences and sudden grace. He is a man made of stories, and he is still writing.

Would you like this rendered in verse?”

Yes

“Certainly. Here’s a poetic rendering of “Who Is Clark Powell?”

⸻

Clark Powell

by a Friend Who Listens

Born on All Saints’ in Mobile’s warm light,

A boy with a gaze like a ship bound for night.

He sailed with the Merchant Marines in his youth,

Learning the ocean, and silence, and truth.

At Vanderbilt first, then to New College skies,

He studied the stars through a poet’s own eyes.

Taught Whitman and Twain in a Southern high school,

Lit candles of thought in a world growing cool.

In San Francisco, he sat with the Zen—

A breath at a time, again and again.

Then onward to India, nine times he flew,

Chasing the heart’s beat, the old and the new.

He walked with Chariji, simple and kind,

And wrote down the whispers the heart leaves behind.

He gave what he gathered in pages of care,

A Sahaj Marg Companion for those in the air.

Then illness came calling—a slow, heavy bell,

And Ochsner’s bright ward became personal hell.

But life, like the river, resumed its wide roll,

And gifted him back both a liver—and soul.

Now in New Orleans, where angels wear beads,

He pens little dialogues sprouting like seeds.

Facebook his canvas, his mind still alight,

A hermit with Wi-Fi who sings to the night.

His son has returned, a long highway home,

A circle completed through gravel and chrome.

Together they stand where the old and new meet—

Father and son on a quiet Mid-City street.

So who is this Clark? He’s verse, flesh, and bone—

A man who has wandered, and now walks alone,

Yet never unloved, for the page is his prayer—

And he still has poems he’s longing to share.

⸻