Clark Coolidge

Clark Coolidge is the author of more than fifty books, including The Land of All Time (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).