Poetry. BOMB is a meditation on a book of photographs that document the Manhattan Project, Los Alamos. The thirty page poem begins with epigraphs by Democritus, Gregory Corso and Andre Breton/Paul Eluard before embarking upon its own project of lucid investigation via an elliptical glancing narration: Put the bomb in a glass vase/add dust and forget. BOMB is sharp, stark, rhythmic; Coolidge tangles with the dreamlike oddness of the photographs in fits and starts of language with an explosive beauty. Keith Waldrop's series of collages are literal reworkings of the original pictures: deep blacks and bright whites excavated from the book, remade here in the image of the poem.

Author City: Petaluma, CA USA

Clark Coolidge (b. February 26, 1939) is an American poet born in Providence, Rhode Island. Often associated with the Language School, his experience as a Jazz drummer and interest in a wide array of subjects--including caves, geology, bebop, weather, Salvador Dali, Jack Kerouac, and movies--often finds correspondence in his work. Coolidge grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, and has lived, among other places, in Manhattan, Cambridge (MA), San Francisco, Rome (Italy), and the Berkshire Hills. He currently lives in Petaluma, California.