Mine: One That Enters the Stories

by Clark Coolidge

Poetry. A reprint of this 1982 book of prose poetry by the nearly legendary avant-garde stalwart Clark Coolidge still exudes freshness. "A long-time master of the jazzy long work, Clark Coolidge has this time turned the long poem in prose into a non-fiction novel or tomb full of buried things taken with you of the new existence of old logic and present looking, all sung by a free man wortking alone and trapped as one is in cave with finite supply of oxygen, food, breath & luck"--Bernadette Mayer on MINE. Coolidge's many other titles available from SPD include ALIEN TATTERS, WAY OUT WEST, ON THE NAMEWAYS, and ON THE NAMEWAYS VOL. 2.

Genres: Poetry

123 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1982

About the author

Coolidge attended Brown University, where his father taught in the music department. After moving to New York City in the early 1960s, Coolidge cultivated links with Ted Berrigan and Bernadette Mayer. Often associated with the Language School his experience as a jazz drummer and interest in a wide array of subjects including caves, geology, bebop, weather, Salvador Dalí, Jack Kerouac and movies, Coolidge often finds correspondence in his work. Coolidge grew up in Providence, Rhode Island and has lived, among other places, in Manhattan, Cambridge (MA), San Francisco, Rome (Italy), and the Berkshire Hills. He currently lives in Petaluma, California.

Reviews

[Louis Cabri]

Oh, so fresh! So many ways to read this great book. Four that occur just now: 1) as expressing doubts about the increasing distances between particulars & hence as wonderings (if not quite doubts) about sustaining a particularist poetics, while compelled to do so all the same; 2) example (as in much of Coolidge) of self-reflexive pomo that isn't trying-to-be-funny goofy pastiche; 3) of an expansive tendency he shared with a number at the time, & which he took in the direction of This could go on forever because "I will take a walk and speak of wonderous things and never leave my house" (96) "[s]ince I cannot see it I must imagine a body of water from this window" (112) even though "the unfolding of the species proceeds further into self-containment. We will no longer admit to the possession of outsides" (49); leading to 4) how it anticipates (eg "I take down a sandwich and read it but do not eat it in the morning" [102]) McCaffery's treatment of plot devices & narrative in Panopticon.

"I have loved those ranging messes, when the words tighten into bolts" (109). As a writing method, a contrast is being drawn here, between two opposing pulls, but where each requires the other (that all-important "when"). Kerouac (ranging messes) comes after Williams (bolts), so there's a temporal dialogue (dialectic) going on here formally.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably my favorite Coolidge.