Obituary: Written by Patrick Barry
September 21, 2021
by Maia Poling
Clark (“Corky”) Poling | b. September 15, 1940; d. September 12, 2021
If the world is cruel it is only so that we better recognize compassion and grace. If it is unfair it is only so that we humble ourselves, yielding to its mysteries. If it is dark it is only so that we can see and understand light. If the body fails it is only to give strength to the spirit for its journey beyond the realm of the known.
Clark (“Corky”) Poling was gifted into our lives so that we may better learn how joy is at once made possible by suffering and also transcends it.
Clark Jr., or “Corky,” was born on September 15, 1940, in Schenectady, New York, to Clark Sr. and Elizabeth Poling. Tragedy struck almost immediately. When Corky was just two years old he lost his father to the war effort. Clark Sr., one of the now-famed Four Chaplains, was a minister and lieutenant in the U.S. Army. He, along with the three other Army chaplains aboard the sinking U.S.S. Dorchester gave up their life jackets to other soldiers so that they could be saved. The Four Chaplains then locked arms, said prayers, and sang hymns.
In the void left by his father’s heroic passing, Clark found a father figure in his mother’s second husband, Fitz, only to see him taken by spinal meningitis. It was largely from Fitz that Clark discovered and primed his artistic and creative impulses. If the ocean and illness took Clark Sr. and Fitz, respectively, it was in art that Clark found and sculpted himself. Art would not only be his refuge but his life’s work, his passion. He became deeply connected to the New York avant garde in the 1960s and ‘70s, earning his B.A. at Yale and his M.A. and Ph.D. at Columbia.
One night at a loft party in New York City, he met Eve (“Evie”) Corey, a Californian beauty who was in the city visiting a friend. Within just two weeks of meeting, Eve decided to move across the country so the two could be together. Their wedding portrait, a simple black and white image, says it all. Transcribed beneath their bohemian garb and jubilant faces are words that capture the essence of the moment: “We’re getting married! Woopie!”
Clark and Eve moved to Atlanta in 1974, where he was offered a tenure track professorship in the Art History Department at Emory University. His early academic work focused on Modern and Contemporary art, with a particular emphasis on Kandinsky and The Bauhaus. Later in his career he would study the Surrealists, including André Masson and Giacometti. In his nearly forty-year-long career, he taught at a dozen institutions, foremost Emory. He continued to teach well past retirement, including continuing studies courses at Stanford, Cal-Berkeley, and California College of the Arts. He contributed widely to the field, publishing scores of articles and books on his research and receiving a multitude of grants, fellowships, and awards. Among all his professional accomplishments, taking Emory undergraduates to France for a summer program year after year was perhaps most dear to him. It was there he shepherded students through Parisian museums to relish art and culture, including his very own daughters.
Nora was born in 1975; Maia came second in 1980. Being a father was deeply important to Clark. His daughters brought him such joy. Raising Nora and Maia was a gift to him. He treasured his time with them and their families, so proud of who they had become, so deeply wanting to be present in their lives. Perhaps fittingly then, on a quiet, sunny Monday morning, two days shy of what would have been his eighty-first birthday, and after a valiant, years-long battle with Parkinson’s, Clark let go on his own terms and with the validation of of his daughters, who ensured him he was loved, he was loved, he was loved. It bears repeating.
And so it is he leaves the material world a manifest embodiment of what is possible when we do not deny or surrender to the human struggle but accept and meet it with the only force equal to the task: love. His touch, his words, his smile, his mere presence in a room––all bore the mark of a gentle soul in love with life. Having endured more than one’s fair share of hardships, Clark didn’t turn to despair or worse, cynicism; instead, he doubled down on forces far stronger: Love. Kindness. Beauty. “My story has a happy ending,” he writes in his memoir. That he chose to see and write it that way shouldn’t be at all surprising to those who knew and loved him, and yet it is still nothing short of remarkable.
True, a part of each of us is gone with him. Also true: he lives within each of us and in the world we call home. Taste of him in the savory, sharp bite of sausage ragù and the contrasting textures of artisan whole-grain bread. Look for him in the shimmering, sun-soaked New England leaves, the verdant Georgian savannah, the golden California hills. See him in the sharp, geometric lines and bright colors of a Kandinsky, or the curiously slender, slightly mad proportions of a Giacometti sculpture. Hear him in the quiet murmurs and shuffling of feet of patrons in the Guggenheim, the Pompidou, or the Walker. Stay and linger in the tastes and sounds and sights, just as he would.
Let us fill our cups with his zest for life.
He was preceded in death by his father, Clark Poling Sr.; mother, Elizabeth Yung Poling; and step-father, Gayle Fitzsimmons. Among those who Corky leaves behind to take up his charge are Eve Corey Poling, wife and partner of fifty-one years; daughters Nora Poling (Phoebe and Baxter Bergman) and Maia Poling (Patrick, Adrian, and Otto Barry); and sisters Susan Smith, Kate Parker, and Gayle Shanley. Clark found a second family within Eve’s family and his sister-in-laws, brother-in-laws, and nephews were so loved and cherished by him.
If the world is cruel it is only so that we better recognize compassion and grace. If it is unfair it is only so that we humble ourselves, yielding to its mysteries. If it is dark it is only so that we can see and understand light. If the body fails it is only to give strength to the spirit for its journey beyond the realm of the known.
Clark (“Corky”) Poling was gifted into our lives so that we may better learn how joy is at once made possible by suffering and also transcends it.
Clark Jr., or “Corky,” was born on September 15, 1940, in Schenectady, New York, to Clark Sr. and Elizabeth Poling. Tragedy struck almost immediately. When Corky was just two years old he lost his father to the war effort. Clark Sr., one of the now-famed Four Chaplains, was a minister and lieutenant in the U.S. Army. He, along with the three other Army chaplains aboard the sinking U.S.S. Dorchester gave up their life jackets to other soldiers so that they could be saved. The Four Chaplains then locked arms, said prayers, and sang hymns.
In the void left by his father’s heroic passing, Clark found a father figure in his mother’s second husband, Fitz, only to see him taken by spinal meningitis. It was largely from Fitz that Clark discovered and primed his artistic and creative impulses. If the ocean and illness took Clark Sr. and Fitz, respectively, it was in art that Clark found and sculpted himself. Art would not only be his refuge but his life’s work, his passion. He became deeply connected to the New York avant garde in the 1960s and ‘70s, earning his B.A. at Yale and his M.A. and Ph.D. at Columbia.
One night at a loft party in New York City, he met Eve (“Evie”) Corey, a Californian beauty who was in the city visiting a friend. Within just two weeks of meeting, Eve decided to move across the country so the two could be together. Their wedding portrait, a simple black and white image, says it all. Transcribed beneath their bohemian garb and jubilant faces are words that capture the essence of the moment: “We’re getting married! Woopie!”
Clark and Eve moved to Atlanta in 1974, where he was offered a tenure track professorship in the Art History Department at Emory University. His early academic work focused on Modern and Contemporary art, with a particular emphasis on Kandinsky and The Bauhaus. Later in his career he would study the Surrealists, including André Masson and Giacometti. In his nearly forty-year-long career, he taught at a dozen institutions, foremost Emory. He continued to teach well past retirement, including continuing studies courses at Stanford, Cal-Berkeley, and California College of the Arts. He contributed widely to the field, publishing scores of articles and books on his research and receiving a multitude of grants, fellowships, and awards. Among all his professional accomplishments, taking Emory undergraduates to France for a summer program year after year was perhaps most dear to him. It was there he shepherded students through Parisian museums to relish art and culture, including his very own daughters.
Nora was born in 1975; Maia came second in 1980. Being a father was deeply important to Clark. His daughters brought him such joy. Raising Nora and Maia was a gift to him. He treasured his time with them and their families, so proud of who they had become, so deeply wanting to be present in their lives. Perhaps fittingly then, on a quiet, sunny Monday morning, two days shy of what would have been his eighty-first birthday, and after a valiant, years-long battle with Parkinson’s, Clark let go on his own terms and with the validation of of his daughters, who ensured him he was loved, he was loved, he was loved. It bears repeating.
And so it is he leaves the material world a manifest embodiment of what is possible when we do not deny or surrender to the human struggle but accept and meet it with the only force equal to the task: love. His touch, his words, his smile, his mere presence in a room––all bore the mark of a gentle soul in love with life. Having endured more than one’s fair share of hardships, Clark didn’t turn to despair or worse, cynicism; instead, he doubled down on forces far stronger: Love. Kindness. Beauty. “My story has a happy ending,” he writes in his memoir. That he chose to see and write it that way shouldn’t be at all surprising to those who knew and loved him, and yet it is still nothing short of remarkable.
True, a part of each of us is gone with him. Also true: he lives within each of us and in the world we call home. Taste of him in the savory, sharp bite of sausage ragù and the contrasting textures of artisan whole-grain bread. Look for him in the shimmering, sun-soaked New England leaves, the verdant Georgian savannah, the golden California hills. See him in the sharp, geometric lines and bright colors of a Kandinsky, or the curiously slender, slightly mad proportions of a Giacometti sculpture. Hear him in the quiet murmurs and shuffling of feet of patrons in the Guggenheim, the Pompidou, or the Walker. Stay and linger in the tastes and sounds and sights, just as he would.
Let us fill our cups with his zest for life.
He was preceded in death by his father, Clark Poling Sr.; mother, Elizabeth Yung Poling; and step-father, Gayle Fitzsimmons. Among those who Corky leaves behind to take up his charge are Eve Corey Poling, wife and partner of fifty-one years; daughters Nora Poling (Phoebe and Baxter Bergman) and Maia Poling (Patrick, Adrian, and Otto Barry); and sisters Susan Smith, Kate Parker, and Gayle Shanley. Clark found a second family within Eve’s family and his sister-in-laws, brother-in-laws, and nephews were so loved and cherished by him.