Far Out West

by Clark Coolidge

"39 poems of humour and duress, written while attending to remnants of my childhood on satellite waves, realizing an inherent wackiness in these accounts of men descending from horses before buttes or saloons, speaking lines like ‘This town got a sawbones?’ … They had me so dreaming that I took aim and wrote. Or wrote without hardly aiming to, one."

Genres: Poetry

48 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2001

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

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing but blue sky and dinner bells
all the rest of your lumpy life
sometimes men take worms for steak
lovely to see you Lady Doubleyou
let's let our folks loose of these caves
make a farm out of the lead in your arms
did you like what you did?
lift up that ball don't let it dip
oil it and stagger away
take some stuff off
SALOON: TABLES FOR BADDIES
listen to those boreal choirs
these cat boys are like cattle to a toad
I'd better stop and pan some vitamins
see how gold comes off in the water
take off in a coffin and get away forever
or lurk in some of those famous forests
without a shirt

- River of No Concern, pg. 11

* * *

The boss's name is Ranchline
mainly he pulls pickles in barrels
there are charges
stepped to the window and blotto
next there'll be poesis on a gameboard
what makes you think then
the world will start to gel?
obvious stocks of serial things abide
but not so's you'd know it eh?
carried Clay out and took a bromo
with the will to stop storing things
I thought you saw it through
the one that landed
then put the director home in bed
who walked the perimeter in visible leggings
no one can stop thinking like these are
the weathered frames of Royal Dano

- A Plain Load of Dumb Luck, pg. 25

* * *

A heart full of mortar and a skin full of dynamite
there's a dildo on the horizon
Hoppy's suspicions are prevalent
the bad ones here use "optical" dynamite
I'll kill every fool in this room
those steely eyes can't be flirted with
but he's a man (doom)
I'll agree to whatever you say (darkness)
laid at the base of a buffalo cypress
why he just smashed up a case of meat
do they do crosswords on the prairie?
naw but sometimes
the voice of a boar insists
so we fall home after the evening rustling
and the hacienda's mine but it's
Hoppy's horizon three coats of cement
at every point (Hoppy's disappointment)

- Earnest Tampers, pg. 34

* * *

The shadows blue across Oxening Yard
but these are staples and so seasonal
remove words until you stroke bare walls
people wear vests and say it's the west
like lines in the face occupational dropsy
you'll have to rip hairs from your forehead
it's the law of bacteria to stay until
the connections are metal on cloth
whole tales about "the sense of it" drear
subtitle the Dalton Gang Meets the Chairs
but I'll have whatever you're talking about
some need whiskey some glass evidently
there was no voice over
that old west

- Only Possibilities, pg. 41