Clark Coolidge

Reading from his poetry and celebrating the release of Selected Poems: 1962-1985

from Station Hill Press

Edited by Larry Fagin

Clark Coolidge is a revered figure in the world of American and world experimental poetry. SELECTED POEMS: 1962-1985 will be how Coolidge’s revolutionary early works will be read for generations to come. Lyn Hejinian writes, “Reading through the still incredible work collected in this exemplary SELECTED POEMS, I marvel all over again at the force of even the ‘smallest’ of Clark Coolidge’s poems. Coolidge’s sonic expertise has often been noted, and music—especially bebop and what has followed it—clearly has suggested to him ways to generate rhythmic clusters, to ride accelerations, to invent scales. No other poet ever has so exquisitely, and sometimes also turbulently, written sheer sonic wonder into poetry.” This volume includes an introduction by Bill Berkson, entitled “The Spools of Clark Coolidge,” recounting Coolidge’s coming up and influences as well as eloquently expressing the visionary nature of his poetic enterprise.

Clark Coolidge is the author of more than forty books, including SELECTED POEMS: 1962-1985, Space, Solution Passage, The Crystal Text, At Egypt, NOW IT’S JAZZ: WRITINGS ON KEROUAC & THE SOUNDS, THE ACT OF PROVIDENCE, and most recently 88 SONNETS and A BOOK BEGINNING WHAT AND ENDING AWAY. In 2011 he edited a collection of Philip Guston’s writings and talks for University of California Press. Initially a drummer, he was a member of David Meltzer’s Serpent Power in 1967 and Mix group in 1993-94. Currently he has returned to active drumming with Thurston Moore and the free jazz band Ouroboros.