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.

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

Reading at the Kelly Writers House, October 26, 2017

• Video Recording:

  Watch on Media.sas
• Complete Audio (01:04:32): MP3

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

  Complete recording (1:10:31): 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

  • 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

  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 "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.