COOLIDGE, CLARK - Words

"Clark Coolidge (1939) grew up in Providence, Rhode Island and attended Brown University before moving to New York in the early 1960s. In New York he befriended Ted Berrigan and saw his first book Flag Flutter & U.S. Electric published in 1966. Coolidge moved to San Francisco the next year, where he joined the psych-folk band The Serpent Power as a jazz drummer. His poetry has been published extensively since. Among his many publications are collaborations with Philip Guston, Ron Padgett, Keith Waldrop and others. Coolidge currently lives in Petaluma, California.

Two of finest the labels of The Netherlands, Slowscan and Counter Culture Chronicles, have now released on cassette rare Coolidge recordings from 1969. The cassette, with good quality recordings, comes with an insert recounting the history of Slowscan by its founder Jan van Toorn and the following liner notes:

Clark Coolidge, the poet perhaps most responsible for inspiring the entire experimental field of Language Poetry, produced in 1969 programs of audio pieces by himself and others for KPFS Radio in Berkeley, California. This is one of these programs, from 9/1/1969, comprising two Coolidge works read in his own voice. The pieces are built on various combinations of repeated words. The rhythmic interplay and unexpected juxtapositions of these looped sounds create a hypnotic patterning, magnified in part by the writer’s flat effect that serves to focus attention on the strangeness of the sounds of these quotidan syllables." - Counter Culture Chronicles.