{"title":"Clark Coolidge","description":"\u003cp\u003eDive into the experimental world of Clark Coolidge, a key figure in Language poetry. Explore his innovative approach to language, rhythm, and form. Perfect for adventurous readers seeking unique poetic voices.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"crystal-text-book-clark-coolidge-9780872869042","title":"The Crystal Text","description":"Clark Coolidge’s book-length meditation on a crystal—long considered a masterpiece of American avant-garde poetry—returns in a new edition.  “No other poet ever has so exquisitely, and sometimes also turbulently, written sheer sonic wonder into poetry.”—Lyn Hejinian, author of My Life and My Life in the Nineties  In the summer of 1982, Clark Coolidge received an unexpected gift of a crystal; small, clear, entirely unexceptional, the crystal nonetheless provoked the poet into writing what has long been considered his masterpiece, The Crystal Text (1986). A durational poem composed over the course of 10 months, in daybook-like entries of varying length, The Crystal Text is multifaceted and elusive, constantly interrogating itself. Is it a meditation on its titular object like Keats’s “Urn” or a radical investigation of the limits of language as a signifying system? Is the poet channeling the crystal to access its message or is the crystal channeling the poet, drawing language from him to fill its colorless emptiness? Is it dictation or improvisation? Is the poem a record of its own crystalline growth or does it capture the process of consciousness itself?   The Crystal Text refuses to resolve the questions it raises but rather inhabits its various possibilities simultaneously, resulting in one of the major works of late 20th century American avant-garde poetry. This new edition includes a preface by poet and scholar Peter Gizzi and an afterword in which Coolidge discusses the text with poet Jason Morris and City Lights editor Garrett Caples.   Associated with the New York School and subsequently inspiring the Language Poets, Coolidge remains one of the most singular and original American poets of our time.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49751843963153,"sku":"NGR9780872869042","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51009337360657,"sku":"NIN9780872869042","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51324135440657,"sku":"CIN0872869040G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52686677704977,"sku":"NLS9780872869042","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0872869040.jpg?v=1751202254"},{"product_id":"book-beginning-what-and-ending-away-book-clark-coolidge-9781934200605","title":"A Book Beginning What and Ending Away","description":"\u003cp\u003eA modern-day Rosetta Stone, \u003ci\u003eBook Beginning What and Ending Away\u003c\/i\u003e bridges the wild conceptual experimentalism of the 1960s and the rigid, doctrine-driven personal politics of the 1970s and early 1980s Language poets, while illuminating the path toward a freeform, devastating 'point perspective lyric' that is Coolidge's operative method today.--Tom Orange\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAt over five hundred pages of sustained, exhilarating prose, this work reconciles the relentless iconoclasm of the language poets with Clark Coolidge's own deeply rooted theories of abstraction and musicality, yet remains astonishingly readable more than thirty years after Coolidge abandoned the project--planned to be more than one thousand pages--in 1980. An act of radical endurance, a resurrected classic.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhy the same cave? It is continuous. The weight exists, a drill, and it is well. One bridge is older than the stream. Of indebtedness great ground now possess changes. Crack cavity in the sung Hallelujah Chorus. I took a drink, still older than unequivocally slabby. My sac deposit lies life size. The well we have is little more than this sheet-iron. The making system drapes the writer's contrast.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAuthor of more than twenty books of poetry, \u003cb\u003eClark Coolidge\u003c\/b\u003e has occupied a singular place in American letters since the mid-1960s. An unparalleled influence on the wider avant-garde--the Language Poets, the second and third generation New York School, and whole movements of visual artists, musicians, and linguists, Coolidge is from Providence, Rhode Island. Since 1997 he has lived in Petaluma, California.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50253567394065,"sku":"GOR013899192","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1934200603.jpg?v=1751315042"},{"product_id":"this-time-we-are-both-book-clark-coolidge-9781933254623","title":"This Time We Are Both","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50393957531921,"sku":"CIN1933254629G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1933254629.jpg?v=1750771355"},{"product_id":"far-out-west-book-clark-coolidge-9780970625045","title":"Far Out West","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51009856078097,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51009860108561,"sku":"NIN9780970625045","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52448950681873,"sku":"CIN0970625049G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0970625049.jpg?v=1750916146"},{"product_id":"cave-book-clark-coolidge-9780976161257","title":"The Cave","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51010079162641,"sku":"NIN9780976161257","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51909746163985,"sku":"CIN0976161257G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0976161257.jpg?v=1751202873"},{"product_id":"88-sonnets-book-clark-coolidge-9781934200612","title":"88 Sonnets","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"Clark Coolidge is a one-man avant-garde.\"--Peter Gizzi\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eClark Coolidge's embrace of the sonnet form is a gemlike amalgam of narrative urge, wacky name-dropping, and pure visuality. Coolidge's legendary proliferation--as many as ten sonnets in a single day--marries the stunning variety of his intellect on the mountaintop of formal inquiry.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"LIBRARY OF HAY\"\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSo slow death oft the onyx dolls\u003cbr\u003e each in its own lab colors rollicking encores\u003cbr\u003e who's there? do you want your museum\u003cbr\u003e room infiltrated? only the singing parts\u003cbr\u003e terrible loss of air raid powder\u003cbr\u003e entanglements poled on kapok\u003cbr\u003e the last to be heard? this ploy of dolls\u003cbr\u003e irradiated heads and curls of coffin wood\u003cbr\u003e death is always plural here? stolid\u003cbr\u003e anyway someway still enters the frontway\u003cbr\u003e through the water door to Manikin Lake\u003cbr\u003e the throttles held down there you went to\u003cbr\u003e hair school against my wisdom thus the\u003cbr\u003e remnants spelled out there then coded there\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eClark Coolidge\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Providence, Rhode Island. Though associated with the Language Poets, his work predates the movement and despite close contact with many of them he remains distinct from any movement, literary or political. The author of more than twenty books of verse and prose, he is also the editor of \u003ci\u003ePhilip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51057440686353,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51057443438865,"sku":"NIN9781934200612","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52599911842065,"sku":"NLS9781934200612","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53611298062609,"sku":"CIN1934200611VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1934200611.jpg?v=1751348174"},{"product_id":"selected-poems-1962-1985-book-clark-coolidge-9781581771497","title":"Selected Poems: 1962-1985","description":"Clark Coolidge is a revered figure in the world of American and world experimental poetry. This \u003ci\u003eSelected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e will be how Coolidge's revolutionary early works will be read for generations to come. The volume includes an Introduction by Bill Berkson, who writes: From the heights each poem appears to take its own peculiar plunge. The insistent musings, discriminations, glees, puzzlements, irritability, those sardonic drive-by puns, and philosophic remarks that register almost as stage whispers without claiming any prior authority, all signify a powerful affection for the world as encompassed, and ultimately, Clark's will to articulate that fabled specific infinity he has had his eye on, the 'quest to know anything, write everything, ' the Chapel Perilous of these poems.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51775336415505,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51775336710417,"sku":"GOR014398382","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781581771497.jpg?v=1751630233"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-au\/collections\/author-books-by-clark-coolidge.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}