Thanks for the tip. I've been doing Clojure full time for about 4 years now, so I think I've got a good head-start. Now I'm looking for something that will help me understand stacks in virtual machines and how to generate bytecode for them from an AST, that kind of thing.
The book that I've recommend will also help you understand what you mentioned. I had a great time going through the book, enjoyed a lot and learned a lot. Really.