Solution Passage

by Clark Coolidge

Genres: Poetry

389 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

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

[Magdalena · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is magic for me. Every time I try to relearn how to write, I open it. The poems look like poems. Small. Short. Square. But they don't act like regular poems. The words don't act like you expect them to.

[elderfoil...the whatever champion · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some favorite poems I recall:

Lifelikeness
Fragment---Rilke
Ode Yet a Moment
Peru Eye, The Heart of the Lamp

didn't care much for section three
maybe sections 1, 2, and 6 best

[W.B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coolidge hit his stride right around these years, I believe. This book is a bit of mindfuck. The work oscillates between being realized philosophies (reifications) and polymorphous perverse sensuality. Sort of a Stevensian transposition into the eighties in other words. Few poets could pull that off, but C.C. did here. You want an elegy, a fuck poem, a Bergsonian poem, a death poem, a birth poem?...make up your grocery list and whatever it is you'll find this is one-stop shopping.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book hasn't exhausted itself in almost twenty years of reading it.

[Ben · Rating 1 out of 5]

i didn't understand a word. clearly i'm missing something and should try again someday...