What do you think?
Rate this book
Own Face
First published in 1978 by United Artists, "Own Face" represents a growing shift of that period of Coolidge's career from a more structurally based, abstract writing to a more personal and lyrical work. In this long out-of-print collection, one can glimpse an important shift in Coolidge's remarkable poetic career, spanning over twenty-seven years and twenty-three book publications.
- GenresPoetry
Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
2 people are currently reading
132 people want to read
About the author
Clark Coolidge
80 books29 followersCoolidge 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 14, 2009
There're 41 ratings to this, now 42, w/ an average of 4.81. Will wonders never cease. Why? As I picked this as my next bk to read I found myself imagining myself thinking: "Why, of all the bks I have laying around to be read, have I picked this?" Maybe b/c it's short & doesn't involve a big investment of time, maybe b/c Coolidge continues to fascinate me even though, in one, sense, I don't really 'get much out of his writing'. As I was reading it, it struck me that, even though I have friends who're poets & even though I have friends who're poetry editors & publishers, it's rare to almost nonexistence for my friends to talk about poetry w/ me - except, perhaps, about their own.
ANYWAY, the back-cover blurb & the chronological bio near the end of the bk together inform me that "Own Face" enables one to "glimpse an important shift in Coolidge's remarkable poetic career" b/c it marks the transition from "what some have described as a reductive syntax in order to open the poem to reveal its visual order and the abstract, but quite meaningful, structures of sound" "to a more seemingly biographical and lyrical writing." Having read the early stuff & now "Own Face" (wch, itself, is 31 yrs old now) I can more or less accept that as a description but I do have to ask: What exactly IS THE MEANING that's so "quite meaningful" b/c I suspect that that's an analytical exaggeration.
As for the "more seemingly biographical": ok, there're alotof references to caving [I learned the word "adit": "An almost horizontal entrance to a mine." [Free Dictionary]} & the front cover is a picture of a guy named Floyd Collins "shortly before his death in Sand Cave". Maybe Coolidge has been a spelunker, maybe he's just using it as a metaphor or some such. The bk's dedicated: "For Bernadette Mayer", I like her writing, if it were me writing the dedication it might mean I either had fucked or wanted to fuck her brains out.
Beyond that? Well, I'm back to "Will wonders ever cease."? In other words, why have so many people read this (in esoteric relativity, ie) & rated it so highly? I dunno. Maybe there're a few influential poetry teachers who get their students to read Coolidge & who convince them that he's great. Dunno. For me, Coolidge is distinct & I like distinctness.. but, otherwise, this bk in particular seems somewhat 'ordinary'. That's probably blasphemy.
Thinking about my relationship to this writing makes me wonder about myself: I can find the deepest things in the most abstruse music, I can be bored to yawns by most art - esp art-for-art's-sake, I can find most (bordering on ALL) poetry a waste-of-time to both write & read.. &, YET, in some way, I, at least philosophically, consider all of them to be part of a bigger whole where they're all equally valuable. So why does music speak to me so profoundly & poetry barely at all? At the same time that I strongly disagree w/ even dividing creative activity up into these discipline niches, I feel the discipline niches as a very concrete 'reality'.
ANYANYWAY, the title "Own Face" makes me think of words taken out of context, isolated to call attn to their phrase potential. He scratched his OWN FACE, eg, as a possible context. "Own Face" by itself is loosened from more ordinary narrative context & becomes more evocative as a result. Do we OWN our FACE? Is there a type of face called OWN FACE? Is there a thing called an OWN that has a FACE? Is there a rock FACE in a cave called an OWN? Bruce Andrews' writing reminds me of Coolidge's.. or vice versa.
p.s. I just looked at the other GoodReads 'reviews' of this & only ONE person had anything to say about it: "This is an all-time classic of American poetry, which I have read and re-read constantly for over ten years. I think Coolidge hits his high point here." Now, there's no reason why this particular individual shd say anything more substantial than this - after all, people writing on GoodReads are mostly just providing quickies, BUT, it still surprises me (& DOESN'T) that there's no real criticism of this bk here. I assume there is elsewhere. It brings me back to "it's rare to almost nonexistence for my friends to talk about poetry w/ me". In other words, why do people rate this so highly but have nothing to say about it?! I gave it the lowest rating of all those who rated it (BUT STILL LIKED IT) & I have the MOST to say about it. It's hard to resist finding the intellectual substance of these high ratings suspect - even though I know that many of the names that I recognize are people whose writings & reviews I have a very high respect for. Give me something to go on here people!
ANYWAY, the back-cover blurb & the chronological bio near the end of the bk together inform me that "Own Face" enables one to "glimpse an important shift in Coolidge's remarkable poetic career" b/c it marks the transition from "what some have described as a reductive syntax in order to open the poem to reveal its visual order and the abstract, but quite meaningful, structures of sound" "to a more seemingly biographical and lyrical writing." Having read the early stuff & now "Own Face" (wch, itself, is 31 yrs old now) I can more or less accept that as a description but I do have to ask: What exactly IS THE MEANING that's so "quite meaningful" b/c I suspect that that's an analytical exaggeration.
As for the "more seemingly biographical": ok, there're alotof references to caving [I learned the word "adit": "An almost horizontal entrance to a mine." [Free Dictionary]} & the front cover is a picture of a guy named Floyd Collins "shortly before his death in Sand Cave". Maybe Coolidge has been a spelunker, maybe he's just using it as a metaphor or some such. The bk's dedicated: "For Bernadette Mayer", I like her writing, if it were me writing the dedication it might mean I either had fucked or wanted to fuck her brains out.
Beyond that? Well, I'm back to "Will wonders ever cease."? In other words, why have so many people read this (in esoteric relativity, ie) & rated it so highly? I dunno. Maybe there're a few influential poetry teachers who get their students to read Coolidge & who convince them that he's great. Dunno. For me, Coolidge is distinct & I like distinctness.. but, otherwise, this bk in particular seems somewhat 'ordinary'. That's probably blasphemy.
Thinking about my relationship to this writing makes me wonder about myself: I can find the deepest things in the most abstruse music, I can be bored to yawns by most art - esp art-for-art's-sake, I can find most (bordering on ALL) poetry a waste-of-time to both write & read.. &, YET, in some way, I, at least philosophically, consider all of them to be part of a bigger whole where they're all equally valuable. So why does music speak to me so profoundly & poetry barely at all? At the same time that I strongly disagree w/ even dividing creative activity up into these discipline niches, I feel the discipline niches as a very concrete 'reality'.
ANYANYWAY, the title "Own Face" makes me think of words taken out of context, isolated to call attn to their phrase potential. He scratched his OWN FACE, eg, as a possible context. "Own Face" by itself is loosened from more ordinary narrative context & becomes more evocative as a result. Do we OWN our FACE? Is there a type of face called OWN FACE? Is there a thing called an OWN that has a FACE? Is there a rock FACE in a cave called an OWN? Bruce Andrews' writing reminds me of Coolidge's.. or vice versa.
p.s. I just looked at the other GoodReads 'reviews' of this & only ONE person had anything to say about it: "This is an all-time classic of American poetry, which I have read and re-read constantly for over ten years. I think Coolidge hits his high point here." Now, there's no reason why this particular individual shd say anything more substantial than this - after all, people writing on GoodReads are mostly just providing quickies, BUT, it still surprises me (& DOESN'T) that there's no real criticism of this bk here. I assume there is elsewhere. It brings me back to "it's rare to almost nonexistence for my friends to talk about poetry w/ me". In other words, why do people rate this so highly but have nothing to say about it?! I gave it the lowest rating of all those who rated it (BUT STILL LIKED IT) & I have the MOST to say about it. It's hard to resist finding the intellectual substance of these high ratings suspect - even though I know that many of the names that I recognize are people whose writings & reviews I have a very high respect for. Give me something to go on here people!
February 21, 2011
Whoa was this excellent!
This collection hit all my buttons dead on. Immensely creative, thought provoking, playful, fun, wacky and, at times, profound. Great, great writing.
This collection hit all my buttons dead on. Immensely creative, thought provoking, playful, fun, wacky and, at times, profound. Great, great writing.
January 26, 2022
But it says nothing. And one is as quiet
as if to say nothing moves me. Then
there is the chair. And one speaks of
the chair sitting at the table.
Scraping against surfaces, opening the mouth.
The object is a piece of thing before. One
shifts in a chair and opens the talk.
And the time it says nothing one moves.
The table is too long as the wall. Not
a thing but it stays and one opens
as a mouth will begin. Speaking of
the table, nothing but to avoid that of
the wall. One could return over and over
to the chair, the wall one is sitting at.
Least ways it says nothing. And the
thing is, it says still before
speaking of. The object of nothing, even
speech.
* * *
the rate of this whole circling down has
gone to felt, I took off fat
but the race didn't change
it coupled me instead
to other symptoms standoff loads
a Nevada
lacking searchlight
and misfit tires
* * *
the black cat
had got too light
and had to be diminished
to be discarded
be banished
he never would wear
the suit I bought him
the suit of shoes
* * *
The leaves are all types, of clips or strewn mates.
They come applaud in the wound. A day is not
fit without some strong bind. I contract
a class of trombone.
A view of taupe corbels under the base of
a drilled step. The ounce of it within
leaf of was a golf.
So what if I was still I might.
Bracketings. A loaf tester.
She shrinks. Bald.
I might stay.
* * *
The writer goes stir
jumping at bells
that standing up weren't there
as far as the door
empty smells of the engine on
light snow the whole day falling.
* * *
Hazardous gas came loose
from the two liquids I set
to plow together.
How can I live in a house
such of my own mistaking
reside.
I am as ignorant as
I muddle the layers.
* * *
Salutes balk.
Stymy in the sun
of land mine.
Flexing towers the waves
and their notes. We'll occult slow
by the inch round.
Coats the zip out there
that meets and's still up.
Fluted sorry
it's not drilled.
* * *
You must have missed the signpost, took
the wrong turning, ended up for the sore moment
in that mud without holes. You must gaze
into the sun here to take your rest, suspend
motion and speech on a point of
zircon sand. The only articulate surfaces, they
are also somehow sounds, are buildings which
as you approach pour their facades at your feet
in a rush of the purest substances.
There are no faces to be seen since all
that is human here is you.
Numbers are become animal forms: the pounce,
the adder and the lynx. The things you loved
are all shades of moss.
Your only index the very grains of sand.
And somehow the set of things has you again,
a fascination in love of self.
as if to say nothing moves me. Then
there is the chair. And one speaks of
the chair sitting at the table.
Scraping against surfaces, opening the mouth.
The object is a piece of thing before. One
shifts in a chair and opens the talk.
And the time it says nothing one moves.
The table is too long as the wall. Not
a thing but it stays and one opens
as a mouth will begin. Speaking of
the table, nothing but to avoid that of
the wall. One could return over and over
to the chair, the wall one is sitting at.
Least ways it says nothing. And the
thing is, it says still before
speaking of. The object of nothing, even
speech.
- But It Says Nothing, pg. 7
* * *
the rate of this whole circling down has
gone to felt, I took off fat
but the race didn't change
it coupled me instead
to other symptoms standoff loads
a Nevada
lacking searchlight
and misfit tires
- Clift Tore It, pg. 16
* * *
the black cat
had got too light
and had to be diminished
to be discarded
be banished
he never would wear
the suit I bought him
the suit of shoes
- Beyond, pg. 23
* * *
The leaves are all types, of clips or strewn mates.
They come applaud in the wound. A day is not
fit without some strong bind. I contract
a class of trombone.
A view of taupe corbels under the base of
a drilled step. The ounce of it within
leaf of was a golf.
So what if I was still I might.
Bracketings. A loaf tester.
She shrinks. Bald.
I might stay.
- Dazeness, pg. 39
* * *
The writer goes stir
jumping at bells
that standing up weren't there
as far as the door
empty smells of the engine on
light snow the whole day falling.
- A Winch or Ghost, pg. 44
* * *
Hazardous gas came loose
from the two liquids I set
to plow together.
How can I live in a house
such of my own mistaking
reside.
I am as ignorant as
I muddle the layers.
- Capon, pg. 55
* * *
Salutes balk.
Stymy in the sun
of land mine.
Flexing towers the waves
and their notes. We'll occult slow
by the inch round.
Coats the zip out there
that meets and's still up.
Fluted sorry
it's not drilled.
- Steaming Open Hand, pg. 63
* * *
You must have missed the signpost, took
the wrong turning, ended up for the sore moment
in that mud without holes. You must gaze
into the sun here to take your rest, suspend
motion and speech on a point of
zircon sand. The only articulate surfaces, they
are also somehow sounds, are buildings which
as you approach pour their facades at your feet
in a rush of the purest substances.
There are no faces to be seen since all
that is human here is you.
Numbers are become animal forms: the pounce,
the adder and the lynx. The things you loved
are all shades of moss.
Your only index the very grains of sand.
And somehow the set of things has you again,
a fascination in love of self.
- At the Poem, pg. 88
July 20, 2007
This is an all-time classic of American poetry, which I have read and re-read constantly for over ten years. I think Coolidge hits his high point here.
June 15, 2023
screaming crying throwing up best $90 ive ever spent
September 22, 2024
“I pay for entrance to this life by my exit”
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews