Clark Coolidge

PoemTalk #124, Discussing Jack Kerouac's "Old Angel Midnight", feat. J. C. Cloutier, Michelle Taransky, and Clark Coolidge

Listen to the complete recording and read program notes for the episode at Jacket2.

PoemTalk #60, Discussing Clark Coolidge's "Blues for Alice"

Listen to the complete recording and read program notes for the episode at Jacket2.

1. Small Inventions (plurals) (3:15): MP3
2. Polaroid (2:46): MP3
3. Additional readings, Part 1 (6:30): MP3
4. Additional readings, Part 2 (11:13): MP3
5. Additional readings, Part 3 (16:17): MP3
6. Additional readings, Part 4 (3:05): MP3
7. Additional readings, Part 5 (3:15): MP3
8. Additional readings, Part 6 (6:30): MP3
9. Additional readings, Part 7 (8:42): MP3
10. Additional readings, Part 8 (5:12): MP3
11. Additional readings, Part 9 (4:10): MP3

Recording (3:02:05): MP3

The third hour comprises a long sequence of pieces recorded at the San Francisco Tape Music Center and originally broadcast on Coolidge's WORDS program, KPFA, Berkeley, CA, 9/1/1969. With excerpts of tape pieces "Small Inventions (plurals)" (1969), "Dews" (1969), and a reading from "Polaroid" (1976).

This was recorded at Clark and Susan Coolidge’s home in Petaluma, California.

Coolidge & Cherkovski: In Conversation, Petaluma, CA, June 25, 2018; filmed by Kyle Harvey


Media.SAS Mirror URL: MP3

Reading at the Kelly Writers House, October 26, 2017

• Video Recording:

  Watch on Media.sas
• Complete Audio (1:04:32): MP3

  Reading at Poets House, April 4, 2013

  Recording courtesy of Gryphon Rue. For additional information see Poets House Website.

  The Painter's Poet: a talk on Philip Guston (1:19:19): MP3

  Bill Berkson and Clark Coolidge on Philip Guston, June 8, 2011

  Complete recording (1:10:31): MP3

  Reading at SPD Open House, CA, April 5, 2009

• Recording (13:05): MP3

Reading at SUNY-Buffalo, April 26, 2000

1. Introduction and Let It End with a Broom (2:57): MP3
2. Trips on Choosing (1:23): MP3
3. Rubber Slides (1:24): MP3
4. A Plain Load of Dumb Luck (1:21): MP3
5. For a Decent Man You Sure Get a Hardon Sheriff (0:58): MP3
6. Trustworthy Locator with Dog (0:51): MP3
7. Drops (0:30): MP3
8. Buddha Had to Train Him on Me (0:44): MP3
9. The Greener Sphere Got Shelved (1:28): MP3
10. It's the Globe that Pesters People (1:03): MP3
11. Fire Distinguishers (1:21): MP3
12. Dr. Death Lets Go (0:59): MP3
13. Buddha Cleans (0:49): MP3
14. Little Red Candies (1:08): MP3
15. From the Cimarron Sandhills (0:51): MP3
16. The Salt of a Hidden Bueno (1:09): MP3
17. Hullabaloo at Doodad Theme Park (0:53): MP3
18. Forgotten Title (1:09): MP3
19. Off a Flake (0:35): MP3
20. Little Place of Redness (0:28): MP3
21. Several (1:03): MP3
22. Buffalo Friends (1:00): MP3
23. Wagon Boys (1:06): MP3
24. The Boys that Take Forever (0:56): MP3
25. Where the Symbol of Water Is Fire (0:56): MP3
26. Asbestos Conductor (1:11): MP3
27. A Warm Afternoon in Dutch (1:16): MP3
28. My Shine on the War (1:02): MP3
29. Under the Solstice Scissors (1:04): MP3
30. The American Day (1:29): MP3
31. The Shield of What Ails You (1:00): MP3
32. Christo in Sarajevo, an Occupational Diminuendo (1:04): MP3
33. The Game Boy (1:10): MP3
34. I Said the Duck (1:29): MP3
35. Doubletalk on Tumbler's Flats (1:17): MP3
36. Money Plays (1:11): MP3
37. To Stop (0:46): MP3
38. Starting with Wall Boy (0:31): MP3
39. Cobb (1:18): MP3
40. A Moon Obscured by Clowns (0:57): MP3
41. No Fun (0:21): MP3
42. Scraping By on the Chance to Say Nothing (1:09): MP3
43. You See the Yell on That One (0:37): MP3
44. Tapioca, or Follow the Dots (1:12): MP3
45. Goals of the Ancient Popeye (1:14): MP3
46. This Canvas Sea We're Dying In (1:07): MP3
47. Plot (0:36): MP3
48. Occasion Killer (1:14): MP3
49. This Is No Time for Lemonade (2:34): MP3
• complete reading (53:52): MP3

Most of these poems can be found in On the Nameways (The Figures, 2000) or Far Out West (Adventures in Poetry, 2001)

Reading at UCSC, March 1, 2000

1. Introduction by Peter Gizzi (4:20): MP3
2. Coolidge reading (56:20): MP3
3. Q & A: Serpent Power (5:35): MP3
4. Q & A: Publishing (0:39): MP3
5. Q & A: Kerouac (2:51): MP3
6. Q & A: Spicer (2:27): MP3

Reading Kerouac with Michael Gizzi, West Stockbridge, MA, studio of Steve Schwartz, 1994

Reading Kerouac's Old Angel Midnight (45:53): MP3

Reading as part of The Tenth Muse II, Unterberg Poetry Center, 92nd Street Y, New York, NY, March 8, 1993


Photo © Lawrence Schwartzwald
• with Charles Bernstein and Susan Howe
  
• Introduction by Robert Creeley
• Complete reading (Coolidge reads "For John Cage") (23:08): MP3
• Recording courtesy of the Unterberg Poetry Center



Reading at Wednesdays @ 4 Plus, SUNY-Buffalo, November 14, 1990

1. Introduction (2:44): MP3
2. Comes Through in the Call Hold (Improvisations on Cecil Taylor) (17:02): MP3
3. Registers (People In All) (13:22): MP3
4. This Time We Are Both (20:15): MP3
Complete reading (53:46): MP3

Reading selections from Samuel Beckett's prose works and discussing his own writing, Wednesdays @ 4 Plus, SUNY-Buffalo, November 15, 1990

Reading from Beckett

1. Introduction to Beckett's prose work (5:47): MP3
2. reading from "On Joyce's Finnegan's Wake" (1:55): MP3
3. reading from Proust (1:07): MP3
4. reading from Dream of Fair to Middling Women (2:01): MP3
5. reading from "Dante and the Lobster" (2:39): MP3
6. reading from Murphy (2:22): MP3
7. reading from a letter to Axel Kaun (2:03): MP3
8. reading from a letter to Thomas MacGreevey (0:32): MP3
9. reading from Watt (3:27): MP3
10. reading from an early version of Krapp's Last Tape (0:43): MP3
11. reading from an interview with Gabriel d'Aubarede (0:08): MP3
12. reading from "La Peinture des van Veldes" (0:16): MP3
13. reading from The End (1:09): MP3
14. reading from Mercier and Camier (1:57): MP3
15. reading from The Expelled (1:49): MP3
16. reading from First Love (1:12): MP3
17. reading from The Calamative (2:40): MP3
18. reading from Molloy (5:25): MP3
19. reading from Malone Dies (8:52): MP3
20. reading from Texts for Nothing (2:42): MP3
21. reading from Embers (0:10): MP3
22. reading from How It Is (0:42): MP3
23. reading from Fizzle No. 4 (2:41): MP3
24. reading from a conversation with Tom Driver (0:50): MP3
25. reading from an interview with Lawrence Harvey (1:15): MP3
26. reading from Enough (0:27): MP3
27. reading from Imagination Dead Imagine (1:47): MP3
28. reading from Ping (1:14): MP3
29. reading from Lessness (0:41): MP3
30. reading from The Lost Ones (1:17): MP3
31. reading from Beckett's translation of "Pour Avigdor Arikha" (0:31): MP3
32. reading from Company (4:27): MP3
33. reading from Ill Seen Ill Said (4:03): MP3
34. reading from Worstward Ho (4:29): MP3
35. reading from a conversation with Charles Juliet (0:40): MP3

Discussion

1. on Clark Coolidge's The Crystal Text (2:15): MP3
2. The relation between Cecil Taylor's music and Clark Coolidge's poetry (7:35): MP3
3. The resistance of language (3:49): MP3
4. Emphasis of talking about music in Coolidge's work (6:17): MP3
5. Experimenting with and limiting vocabulary (2:56): MP3
6. "Physics of sense and motion" in poetry and words as material (5:14): MP3
7. Collaboration in poetry (5:28): MP3
8. Writers using other writers' words, forgetfulness, and Robert Smithson's notion of dedifferentiation (5:10): MP3
9. differences between the poet and the literary critic (1:59): MP3
10. being attacked for doing something different (2:56): MP3
11. on John Cage (4:18): MP3
12. attaining ecstatic states through writing and Jack Kerouac (4:53): MP3
13. jazz and improvisation in relation to public readings and performances (5:27): MP3

Complete recording (2:13:30): MP3

At The Kootenay School of Writing, Vancouver, 1988

• Reading on October 12, 1988 Part 1 (45:12): MP3
• Reading on October 12, 1988 Part 2 (17:30): MP3
• Reading on October 12, 1988 Full (1:02:50): MP3

Speaking in Cummington, MA, June 28, 1987

Introduction by Ed Foster

Complete Recording (39:20): MP3

Segue Series Reading at the Ear Inn, New York, March 1, 1986

1. Middle Borders 1 (3:26): MP3
2. Middle Borders 2 (3:24) MP3
3. Middle Borders 3 (3:45) MP3
4. Middle Borders 4 (5:54) MP3
5. Monk, A Head (2:46) MP3
6. What is Thought but Won't Hold Still (2:01) MP3
7. Ashbery Explained (4:33) MP3
8. Cats Mounted on Cots (7:21) MP3

Complete Reading (35:36): MP3

Reading at the Tyler School of Art April 10, 1985

1. Fact Piece Near That Ocean (5:43): MP3
2. Blues for Alice (2:15): MP3 [text]
3. Days of Time and Twine (3:31): MP3
4. A Note on the Mess (1:10): MP3
5. Rome Passage (2:20): MP3
6. Barely Twombly (2:18): MP3
7. Ashbery Explains (5:29): MP3
8. Somehow to Be Able to Say, Dedicated to Michael Palmer (1:24): MP3
9. Complete Reading (32:25): MP3

"Blues for Alice" is also featured on PoemTalk Episode 60.

Panel Discussion on Image/ Imaging at the Tyler School of Art April 10, 1985. With Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Michael Palmer, John Yau, and Geoffrey Young

• Introduction by David Hannah (6:58): MP3
• Part One (32:50): MP3
• Part Two (32:35): MP3
• (Recordings at Tyler courtesy of Rachel Blau DuPlessis)
1. tenets of Imagism (2:40): MP3
2. Clark Coolidge on logopeia and the movement of language (4:01): MP3
3. Rachel Blau DuPlessis on the rejection of "poetic material" and imaging as a site of struggle (3:28): MP3
4. Michael Palmer on the economy of the poem, the diffusing of Imagism, vorticism and objectification in the body of the poem (11:51): MP3
5. John Yau on stereotypes of the writer and the structure of images one is allowed to produce (3:45): MP3
6. on T.S. Eliot and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (4:23): MP3
7. Rachel Blau DuPlessis on the politics of prosody, the hierarchy of the text and destroying language while using language (3:09): MP3
8. on the totality of the image (2:55): MP3
9. on the visual aspect of words on a pagge (6:05): MP3
10. Michael Palmer on the apparition of visual images in his work (1:40): MP3
11. John Yau on field verse, the source of images, and cues in language (4:03): MP3
12. on the source of dreams and the harmony of the work (3:32): MP3
13. Rachel Blau DuPlessis on being a woman writer, rupturing the images of a culture, and stealing other people's images (5:20): MP3
14. Rachel Blau DuPlessis on deconstructing socially mandated discourses (3:08): MP3
15. Michael Palmer on the analytic-lyric (1:02): MP3
16. Rachel Blau DuPlessis on the place of woman as constructed site and the difference between a feminine and a female poetry (3:46): MP3

80 Langton Street Writers In Residence Readings, October 15-21, 1979

In 1979, Coolidge read from a then untitled prose work. The readings, over six nights, were two hours each, with a break in the middle. There was a question period on the final night. The work was eventually published as A Book Beginning What and Ending Away (Fence Books, 2013). Thanks to John DeWitt.

1. Day 1 Set 1: MP3
   • One: The Caves [1 of 1] (00:15 – 41:15)
   • Two [1 of 3] (41:15 – 46:00)
   
   
2. Day 1 Set 2: MP3
   • Two [2 of 3] (00:00 – 43:30)
   
   
3. Day 2 Set 1: MP3
   • Two [3 of 3] (00:30 – 17:15)
   • Three: Beckett [1 of 2] (17:20 – 43:30)
   
   
4. Day 2 Set 2 MP3
   • Three: Beckett [2 of 2] (00:15 – 03:20)
   • Four [1 of 1] (03:20 – 43:00)
   
   
5. Day 3 Set 1A: MP3
   • Six [1 of 1] (00:00 – 41:30)
   • Seven: Creeley [1 of 3] (41:30 – 47:19)
   
   
6. Day 3 Set 1B: MP3
   • Seven: Creeley [2 of 3] (41:30 – 47:19)
   
   
7. Day 3 Set 2: MP3
   • Seven: Creeley [3 of 3] (00:00 – 29:40)
   • Eight [1 of 2] (29:45 – 44:50)
   
   
8. Day 4 Set 1: MP3
   • Eight [2 of 2] (00:30 – 39:45)
   • Nine: A Geology [1 of 3] (39:45 – 44:40)
   
   
9. Day 4 Set 2: MP3
   • Nine: A Geology [2 of 3] (00:00 – 36:40)


10. Day 5 Set 1: MP3
    • Nine: A Geology [3 of 3] (00:15 –21:40)
    • Ten [1 of 2] (21:45 – 31:10)
    
    
11. Day 5 Set 2: MP3
    • Ten [2 of 2] (00:00 – 47:04)
    
    
12. Day 6 Set 1: MP3
    • Eleven: Dalí [1 of 1] (00:30 – 38:50)
    • Twelve [1 of 3] (00:00 – 02:23)
    
    
13. Day 6 Set 2: MP3
    • Twelve [2 of 3] (00:05 – 47:20)
    • Twelve [3 of 3] (00:00 – 02:23)
    
    
14. Oct. 21, 1979: Q & A
    • Question and answer session [1 of 2]: MP3
    • Question and answer session [2 of 2]: MP3
    
    

Reading at the Ear Inn, New York. March 31, 1979

1. "But it say nothing. If one is as quiet to say nothing..." (0:56): MP3
2. "Is it wicker" (0:28): MP3
3. "There is a caterpillar that makes a very complicated hammock" (3:37): MP3
4. "Clift Tore It" (1:26): MP3
5. "Rhymes With Monk" (3:14): MP3
6. "Beyond" (0:21): MP3
7. "My Gaps are Bags" (0:50): MP3
8. "Losing My Place" (1:58): MP3
9. "How I Open" (0:16): MP3
10. "Chalance" (1:08): MP3
11. "Album — A Runthru" (4:22): MP3
12. "A Note: I think that I live in a world full of silence..." (0:57): MP3
13. "Blazing On" (0:58): MP3
14. "Caveman" (0:46): MP3
15. "Passenger" (1:58): MP3
16. "Thronging Sunk" (0:28): MP3
17. "Two on a Snow Day" (0:50): MP3
18. "4 a.m." (0:35): MP3
19. "Floyd's Bean Cans" (1:27): MP3
20. "Our Nature's Future" (0:49): MP3
21. "Connie's Scared" (3:20): MP3
22. "In Postions is the Matter" (0:31): MP3
23. "At the Poem" (0:51): MP3
Complete Recording (36:05): MP3

Reading from MINE at UCSD, March 11, 1985

• Complete Recording, (53:49)MP3

Reading "American Ones" at the Naropa Institute, July 1977

1. introduction by Michael Brownstein (5:17): MP3
2. Coolidge introduces the poem (1:15): MP3
3. American Ones, Part I (13:47): MP3
4. American Ones, Part II (5:46): MP3
5. American Ones, Part III (6:25): MP3
6. American Ones, Part IV (2:37): MP3
7. American Ones, Part V (9:42): MP3
8. American Ones, Part VI (6:23): MP3
9. American Ones, Part VII (7:42): MP3
10. American Ones, Part VIII (4:39): MP3
11. American Ones, Part IX (2:56): MP3
12. American Ones, Part X (6:05): MP3
• complete reading (1:12:35): MP3
Polaroid, S-Press Cassette
• Side A (59:02): MP3
• Side B (44:59): MP3

Polaroid: Text published by BIG SKY/Adventures in Poetry in 1976

1. Part One (47:08): MP3
2. Part Two (57:28): MP3

Recording made by Michael Kohler at the University of Connecticut in Storrs on September 24, 1974. © 1978 by Clark Coolidge and S PRESS TONBANDVERLAG, Dusseldorf-Munchen, W-Germany.

Reading from Mine: The One That Enters the Stories at UCSD

1. Introduction (2:13): MP3
2. Section 3 (7:30): MP3
3. Section 4 (4:30): MP3
4. Section 5 (6:54): MP3
5. Section 6 (10:17): MP3
6. Section 7 (9:42): MP3
7. Section 11 (9:50): MP3

From The World Record: Readings at the St. Mark's Poetry Project, 1969-1980

1. On Induction of the Hand (2:18): MP3
2. The Hand Further (0:56): MP3

Also of Interest:

• Small Inventions: Suite V (plurals) and Suite IV (2:05) recorded at Mills College, January 1969 (from the LP The Dial-A-Poem Poets, Giorno Poetry Systems 1972)
• excerpt from Dews (1:10) recorded at Mills College, April 1969 (from the LP The Dial-A-Poem Poets: Disconnected, Giorno Poetry Systems 1974)
"Words Program" Interview with Charles Amirkhanian, KPFA-FM, January 9, 1969
(click here for streaming audio, via Archive.org)

Special thanks to Tom Orange for his enthusiasm and editorial guidance, and to Danny Snelson for his help in segmenting the Segue and SUNY

Clark Coolidge on PennSound Daily

• January 4, 2010: "Clark Coolidge: Two New Recordings"
• July 25, 2008: "Coolidge, DuPlessis, Palmer, Yau, Young: Readings and Roundtable at Tyler School of Art, 1985"
• November 20, 2007: "Two Clark Coolidge Readings Available As Singles"

These sound recordings are being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2017 Clark Coolidge. Used with permission of Clark Coolidge. Distributed by PennSound.