Clark Coolidge

Last updated

Clark Coolidge (born February 26, 1939) is an American poet.

Contents

Background

As a teenager, Coolidge attended Classical High School in Providence, Rhode Island. Coolidge briefly attended Brown University, where his father founded and taught in the music department, before dropping out and traveling to Los Angeles.

Career

Coolidge's friendship with Michael Palmer brought the two poets west, first to the Vancouver Poetry Conference of 1963, and then to the Berkeley Poetry Conference of 1964. After moving to New York City in the early 1960s, Coolidge cultivated links with Ted Berrigan and Bernadette Mayer. For a while, he shared an apartment with Aram Saroyan, and the two poets had a mutual influence on one another. His work was published in multiple issues of 0 to 9 magazine, a 1960s mimeographed publication which experimented with language and meaning-making. In 1967, Coolidge moved to San Francisco and joined David Meltzer's band, The Serpent Power, as a drummer. [1] He became close with other San Francisco poets of the period as well, including Philip Whalen, who was an important influence and friend. In 1969, Coolidge produced 17 one-hour programs of experimental audio pieces by himself and others for KPFA, which establish his interest in the sonic properties and materiality of language. He would later elaborate this in a statement he provided for Paul Carroll’s anthology The Young American Poets: “Words have a universe of qualities other than those of descriptive relation: Hardness, Density, Sound-Shape, Vector-Force, & Degrees of Transparency / Opacity.”

Often associated with the Language School [2] 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. [3]

Personal life

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.

Publications

As editor

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lawrence Ferlinghetti</span> American poet (1919–2021)

Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti was an American poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. An author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, and film narration, Ferlinghetti was best known for his second collection of poems, A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), which has been translated into nine languages and sold over a million copies. When Ferlinghetti turned 100 in March 2019, the city of San Francisco turned his birthday, March 24, into "Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Bromige</span> American poet

David Mansfield Bromige was a Canadian-American poet who resided in northern California from 1962 onward. Bromige published thirty books, many so different from one another as to appear to be the work of a different author. Associated in his youth with the New American Poetry and especially with Robert Duncan and Robert Creeley, Bromige is sometimes associated with the language poets, but this connection is based more on his close friendships with some of those poets, and their admiration for his work. It is difficult to fit Bromige into a slot. He departs from language poetry in the thematic unity of many of his poems, in the uses to which he puts found materials, with the romantic aspect of his lyricism, and with the sheer variety of his approaches to the poem.

Lyn Hejinian was an American poet, essayist, translator, and publisher. She is often associated with the Language poets and is known for her landmark work My Life, as well as her book of essays, The Language of Inquiry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joanne Kyger</span> American poet

Joanne Kyger was an American poet. The author of over 30 books of poetry and prose, Kyger was associated with the poets of the San Francisco Renaissance, the Beat Generation, Black Mountain, and the New York School.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Lamantia</span> American poet

Philip Lamantia was an American poet, writer and lecturer. His poetry incorporated stylistic experimentation and transgressive themes, and has been regarded as surrealist and visionary, contributing to the literature of the Beat Generation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Whalen</span> American poet

Philip Glenn Whalen was an American poet, Zen Buddhist, and a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance and close to the Beat generation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keith Waldrop</span> American poet, translator and professor (1932–2023)

Bernard Keith Waldrop was an American poet, translator, publisher, and academic. He won the National Book Award for Poetry for his 2009 collection Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Palmer (poet)</span> American poet and translator (born 1943)

Michael Palmer is an American poet and translator. He attended Harvard University, where he earned a BA in French and an MA in Comparative Literature. He has worked extensively with Contemporary dance since the 1970s and has collaborated with many composers and visual artists. Palmer has lived in San Francisco since 1969.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ron Padgett</span> American poet

Ron Padgett is an American poet, essayist, fiction writer, translator, and a member of the New York School. Great Balls of Fire, Padgett's first full-length collection of poems, was published in 1969. He won a 2009 Shelley Memorial Award. In 2018, he won the Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America.

Michael Davidson is an American poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Berkson</span> American poet, critic, and teacher

William Craig Berkson was an American poet, critic, and teacher who was active in the art and literary worlds from his early twenties on.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aram Saroyan</span> American poet

Aram Saroyan is an American poet, novelist, biographer, memoirist and playwright, who is especially known for his minimalist poetry, famous examples of which include the one-word poem "lighght" and a one-letter poem comprising a four-legged version of the letter "m".

Tom Clark was an American poet, editor and biographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Hoover (poet)</span> American poet and editor (born 1946)

Paul Hoover is an American poet and editor born in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Rodefer</span> American poet and painter

Stephen Rodefer was an American poet and painter who lived in Paris and London. Born in Bellaire, Ohio, he knew many of the early beat and Black Mountain poets, including Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Charles Olson, and Robert Creeley. Rodefer was one of the original Language poets and taught widely, including: UNM, SUNY Buffalo, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, San Francisco State, and the American University of Paris. Rodefer was the first American poet to be offered a Fellowship at Cambridge University.


Kit Robinson is an American poet, translator, writer and musician. An early member of the San Francisco Language poets circle, he has published 28 books of poetry.

Lewis Warsh was an American poet, visual artist, professor, prose writer, editor, and publisher. He was a principal member of the second generation of the New York School poets,; however, he has said that “no two people write alike, even if they’re associated with a so-called ‘school’ .” Professor of English at Long Island University and founding director (2007–2013) of their MFA program in creative writing, Warsh lived in Manhattan with his wife, playwright-teacher Katt Lissard, whom he married in 2001.

Larry Fagin was an American poet, editor, publisher, and teacher, and a member of the New York School.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lewis MacAdams</span> American writer (1944–2020)

Lewis MacAdams was an American poet, journalist, political activist, and filmmaker.

David Daniel Gitin was an American poet and author.

References

  1. "What Is a Poet?". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 2019-06-02.
  2. Sonksen, Mike (2013-04-19). "Small Presses: Poetic Communities Coast to Coast | LA Letters | Land of Sunshine". KCET. Archived from the original on 2013-08-21. Retrieved 2013-04-23.
  3. "Kit Robinson on Coolidge". Epc.buffalo.edu. Retrieved 2013-04-23.
  4. edited by Clark Coolidge and Larry Fagin, with an introduction by Bill Berkson