Description
Poetry. Following Volume One of ON THE NAMEWAYS, this newest work by this modern master is, as the name suggests, partly a meditation on the fact of names: Antonin Artaud in his shoulderpads/ leave and you can say hello/...Karl Malden in the moral void (from Arsenic and Old Blemishes). For Coolidge, the figure of the improvising jazz soloist becomes a model for the poet in the moment of writing -- darting in and out of motivic possibilities, exploring all registers of the instrument, and seeking, always, to sustain a flow of fresh ideas. In poem after poem he produces lines of abstract, bright, musical phrasing. Coolidge was a language poet before there was language poetry -- Michael Leddy, World Literature Today.
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