Search PennSound

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.


Clark Coolidge and Gryphon Rue in Conversation, Earmark program on Montez Press Radio, Petaluma, CA, September 22, 2021

  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

        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
        24. 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: