Description
Music. Cultural Writing. Perhaps no living American poet has taken Kerouac, jazz and bop prosody into as many original directions as Clark Coolidge. In his inimitable prose, Coolidge recalls and explores the role Kerouac (Part 1) and jazz (Part 2) have played in his artistic development. A book of tremendous energy from the very first sentence: ON THE ROAD was first handed to me by somebody in a dorm at Brown, my sophomore year, 1957-58. 'Here, read this.' CRYSTAL TEXT, BOOK OF DURING, MESH and AT EGYPT are among the titles by Clark Coolidge available from SPD.
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