Description
Poetry. I began writing these poems in an empty moment when I thought maybe I'd run out and had no more to do. Snap. I found lines coming to me on waking in the morning, insisting I follow them into odd short poems, strange to see, indicating what I knew not. Eventually I began writing them while watching movies (from Hopalong Cassidy Enters to Last Year At Marienbad) on satellite TV, a practice reminding me of DeKooning drawing with his left hand, Guston pen in hand watching the Watergate coverage, and of course Kerouac scribing his Blues. The point? Freedom. An overcoming of the obstacles erected by any conceptions of the poem. A glee here I hadn't felt since writing the first poems of my own (1965). A casting off into the day's winds, feeling light and lit, knowing I still have a long way to go, a lot more to lose (Preface).
Author Bio
Clark Coolidge is the author of more than fifty books, including THE LAND OF ALL TIMES (Lithic Press, 2020), Space, Solution Passage, The Crystal Text, At Egypt, NOW IT's JAZZ: WRITINGS ON KEROUAC & THE SOUNDS (Living Batch Press, 1999), The Act of Providence, 88 SONNETS (Fence Books, 2012), A Book Beginning What And Ending Away, and most recently, Poet. Connected to both the Language movement and the New York School, his poetry utilizes syntactical and sonic patterns to engage, and generate, meaning. In a 1968 poetics statement, he noted, "Words have a universe of qualities other than those of descriptive relation: Hardness, Density, Sound-Shape, Vector-Force, & Degrees of Transparency/Opacity." Initially a drummer, he was a member of David Meltzer's Serpent Power in 1967 and Mix group in 1993-94. More recently, Coolidge performed duos with Thurston Moore (Among The Poetry Stricken, on Fast Speaking Music) and free improv with Ouroboros (online).
Author City: Petaluma, CA USA