Baffling Means

by Clark Coolidge, Philip Guston

Baffling Means in a collaboration between poet Clark Coolidge and artist Philip Guston, published in 1991.

Genres: Poetry

Hardcover

First published April 1, 1991

About the author

Coolidge 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.

Reviews

[Jon Cone · Rating 2 out of 5]

An apparent collaboraion between the poet Clark Coolidge and the artist Phillip Gustion. In order for a collaboration to be successful there must be a real folding-into of two distinct voices, visions, technique: there is minimal success in this book, in that regard. Surprisingly, it is Guston who manages to play more with Coolidge's words than Coolidge with Guston's chunky cartoonish drawings. Guston inhabits his drawings with debris, cycloptic heads, teeth, shoes, rubble; yet he works with the frequently uninspired text that Coolidge seemingly drops on the ground at his feet. In an ironic turn it is Coolidge that turns out to be the crunkier of the two, demonstrating the greater lack of musicality. Which is a shame, for at his best, Coolidge is a dramatically sonic poet, with a finely tuned (jazz oriented, of course) ear for highly syncopated lines. My favorite
book of Coolidge's is THE BOOK OF DURING, and the chapbook
MELANCHOLIA ~ a meditation in a painterly fashion.