WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.170 align:middle line:84% The way today is going to work, or this hour or so, 00:00:04.170 --> 00:00:09.103 align:middle line:84% is that we're going to begin by just having a conversation. 00:00:09.103 --> 00:00:10.770 align:middle line:84% I'm going to have Clark, as he just said 00:00:10.770 --> 00:00:12.285 align:middle line:90% to me, answer for his sins. 00:00:12.285 --> 00:00:15.450 align:middle line:90% 00:00:15.450 --> 00:00:19.290 align:middle line:84% And then we'll open it up to all of you, 00:00:19.290 --> 00:00:22.050 align:middle line:84% to ask questions about Clark's work. 00:00:22.050 --> 00:00:24.990 align:middle line:84% This evening, of course, Clark Coolidge 00:00:24.990 --> 00:00:28.830 align:middle line:84% is going to be reading for the Intermezzo and POG series, 00:00:28.830 --> 00:00:32.700 align:middle line:84% and for Poetry Center, down at the Tucson 00:00:32.700 --> 00:00:35.010 align:middle line:90% Temple of Arts and Music. 00:00:35.010 --> 00:00:39.360 align:middle line:84% That will be a $5 suggested donation at the door. 00:00:39.360 --> 00:00:41.795 align:middle line:84% And of course, if you're a student, particularly 00:00:41.795 --> 00:00:43.170 align:middle line:84% a student of mine, just tell them 00:00:43.170 --> 00:00:45.750 align:middle line:84% and we can figure something out, if $5 is a problem, 00:00:45.750 --> 00:00:48.510 align:middle line:90% but it shouldn't be. 00:00:48.510 --> 00:00:52.110 align:middle line:84% In addition to a Coolidge, we will also 00:00:52.110 --> 00:00:54.360 align:middle line:84% have Teré Fowler-Chapman, who will be reading, 00:00:54.360 --> 00:00:57.180 align:middle line:84% and the pianist Michael Dauphinais, 00:00:57.180 --> 00:00:59.400 align:middle line:84% who will play for us some Morton Feldman pieces, 00:00:59.400 --> 00:01:02.160 align:middle line:84% some very short, precise Morton Felton pieces. 00:01:02.160 --> 00:01:04.650 align:middle line:90% So bring your listening ears. 00:01:04.650 --> 00:01:07.290 align:middle line:90% Be ready. 00:01:07.290 --> 00:01:10.740 align:middle line:84% In addition to that, we have organized a musical evening 00:01:10.740 --> 00:01:14.910 align:middle line:84% on Wednesday night at Charles Alexander's Chax Press, 00:01:14.910 --> 00:01:19.950 align:middle line:84% downtown on 7th Avenue, and that will be happening at 7 o'clock. 00:01:19.950 --> 00:01:24.330 align:middle line:84% And we've organized it with a few local musicians that 00:01:24.330 --> 00:01:30.810 align:middle line:84% span the range from avant garde electric musicians to low fi, 00:01:30.810 --> 00:01:34.260 align:middle line:84% improv noise musicians, and Clark will 00:01:34.260 --> 00:01:36.870 align:middle line:90% be headlining as a drummer. 00:01:36.870 --> 00:01:41.028 align:middle line:84% So I hope that you all are able to make some of these events. 00:01:41.028 --> 00:01:42.570 align:middle line:84% Another event that I want to tell you 00:01:42.570 --> 00:01:46.140 align:middle line:84% about that's coming up recently is that POG is having a-- 00:01:46.140 --> 00:01:49.020 align:middle line:84% POG, which is the poetry organizing group in town that 00:01:49.020 --> 00:01:53.970 align:middle line:84% helped bring Clark to campus, is having a holiday celebration 00:01:53.970 --> 00:01:56.610 align:middle line:84% on December 10th at 7 o'clock at a new-- 00:01:56.610 --> 00:01:59.100 align:middle line:84% an amazing gallery called Exploded View, 00:01:59.100 --> 00:02:02.670 align:middle line:84% which is a great new micro cinema and video art 00:02:02.670 --> 00:02:03.900 align:middle line:90% gallery, here in town. 00:02:03.900 --> 00:02:07.020 align:middle line:84% So be thinking about that for the future. 00:02:07.020 --> 00:02:08.699 align:middle line:84% I wanted to thank again, and make sure 00:02:08.699 --> 00:02:12.960 align:middle line:84% that I thanked both POG and the organizers 00:02:12.960 --> 00:02:15.570 align:middle line:84% for POG, including Charles Alexander, Tenney 00:02:15.570 --> 00:02:18.810 align:middle line:84% Nathanson, Sam Ace, who are in the audience. 00:02:18.810 --> 00:02:22.800 align:middle line:84% And I also wanted to make sure to thank Poetry Center, Tyler 00:02:22.800 --> 00:02:25.500 align:middle line:84% Meier here, the executive director, helped 00:02:25.500 --> 00:02:29.490 align:middle line:84% make this all possible, to bring Clark to campus. 00:02:29.490 --> 00:02:32.010 align:middle line:84% I also, of course, want to thank the English Department 00:02:32.010 --> 00:02:35.220 align:middle line:84% and particularly, our new esteemed head, Lee Medovoi, 00:02:35.220 --> 00:02:39.810 align:middle line:84% who is really helping us create more of a community that 00:02:39.810 --> 00:02:43.830 align:middle line:84% can bring in new and amazing artists 00:02:43.830 --> 00:02:47.040 align:middle line:90% to come talk to all of you. 00:02:47.040 --> 00:02:49.860 align:middle line:84% I think that's-- if I've missed anyone, tell me, 00:02:49.860 --> 00:02:53.370 align:middle line:84% and I will jump up and say and apologize for my sins. 00:02:53.370 --> 00:02:56.100 align:middle line:90% 00:02:56.100 --> 00:03:02.120 align:middle line:90% So, I wanted it to begin-- 00:03:02.120 --> 00:03:06.100 align:middle line:84% and I hope that this is acceptable for someone 00:03:06.100 --> 00:03:08.455 align:middle line:90% who's introducing to read. 00:03:08.455 --> 00:03:11.740 align:middle line:90% 00:03:11.740 --> 00:03:17.440 align:middle line:84% And I read this, perhaps, as a way to both 00:03:17.440 --> 00:03:20.060 align:middle line:84% put Coolidge's words into the air. 00:03:20.060 --> 00:03:22.150 align:middle line:84% But also to have each of you think 00:03:22.150 --> 00:03:27.730 align:middle line:84% about the possibility of a poetics implicit in a poetry. 00:03:27.730 --> 00:03:31.810 align:middle line:84% "On Induction of the Hand" from Solution Passage. 00:03:31.810 --> 00:03:34.510 align:middle line:84% "Perhaps I've got to write better longer, 00:03:34.510 --> 00:03:38.320 align:middle line:84% thinking of it as grown up out of the same singular lost. 00:03:38.320 --> 00:03:41.290 align:middle line:84% The pattern is in or is it under the hands. 00:03:41.290 --> 00:03:45.490 align:middle line:84% Better be in or it's gone from the brain, choking on airless. 00:03:45.490 --> 00:03:48.500 align:middle line:84% The outside leaves stain the sands of my sleep, 00:03:48.500 --> 00:03:51.250 align:middle line:84% even through glass and alerted in this very chair. 00:03:51.250 --> 00:03:54.490 align:middle line:84% As I thought, I snoozed by the strings of this world. 00:03:54.490 --> 00:03:55.600 align:middle line:90% What world? 00:03:55.600 --> 00:03:58.780 align:middle line:84% Evening of a syntax brought full over the mounds of these. 00:03:58.780 --> 00:04:00.580 align:middle line:90% What lives but hopes. 00:04:00.580 --> 00:04:05.740 align:middle line:84% There is a wrench that a certain staring at while balancing 00:04:05.740 --> 00:04:09.730 align:middle line:84% humours we call words in state pours wings of edgy fondness, 00:04:09.730 --> 00:04:12.640 align:middle line:84% bound useless in calm of lucidity down the chute 00:04:12.640 --> 00:04:13.990 align:middle line:90% of the sentence. 00:04:13.990 --> 00:04:17.800 align:middle line:84% So-called duty roster activity when typing at the seeming 00:04:17.800 --> 00:04:19.630 align:middle line:90% to be nodded at by trees. 00:04:19.630 --> 00:04:20.860 align:middle line:90% They yearn? 00:04:20.860 --> 00:04:22.210 align:middle line:90% Saying that I am out there. 00:04:22.210 --> 00:04:24.700 align:middle line:84% With a lute, I hope carries me swaying back 00:04:24.700 --> 00:04:26.800 align:middle line:90% to here by means of them there. 00:04:26.800 --> 00:04:29.500 align:middle line:84% A tree could even be a monad to this use. 00:04:29.500 --> 00:04:32.380 align:middle line:84% Though never is it held in my heed to be even. 00:04:32.380 --> 00:04:34.420 align:middle line:90% I let myself off myself never. 00:04:34.420 --> 00:04:37.090 align:middle line:84% No dope again, trembling my attic wires loose 00:04:37.090 --> 00:04:38.410 align:middle line:90% from their packets. 00:04:38.410 --> 00:04:41.740 align:middle line:84% Containments of such that I never think them sendable. 00:04:41.740 --> 00:04:45.190 align:middle line:84% A poet used the word lozenge, he didn't write it. 00:04:45.190 --> 00:04:46.900 align:middle line:84% Some other and more careless scribe 00:04:46.900 --> 00:04:48.880 align:middle line:84% wanted me to write one of those but the hell 00:04:48.880 --> 00:04:50.560 align:middle line:90% with what lies off him. 00:04:50.560 --> 00:04:53.410 align:middle line:90% I remain stormy in my paradise." 00:04:53.410 --> 00:04:54.430 align:middle line:90% And there's more. 00:04:54.430 --> 00:04:58.000 align:middle line:90% 00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:02.260 align:middle line:84% So Clark Coolidge, to my left, was born 00:05:02.260 --> 00:05:03.850 align:middle line:90% in Providence, Rhode Island. 00:05:03.850 --> 00:05:08.050 align:middle line:84% He's a poet and a drummer, a geologist, and a cave explorer. 00:05:08.050 --> 00:05:11.320 align:middle line:84% He's the author of more than 30 books of poetry and prose. 00:05:11.320 --> 00:05:15.430 align:middle line:84% From Flag Flutter and US Electric in 1966, 00:05:15.430 --> 00:05:18.850 align:middle line:84% to the recent 88 Sonnets and Book Beginning What 00:05:18.850 --> 00:05:21.340 align:middle line:84% and Ending Away, both brought out by Fence, 00:05:21.340 --> 00:05:23.590 align:middle line:84% and Flag Flutter, it was originally 00:05:23.590 --> 00:05:29.260 align:middle line:84% brought out by Aram Saroyan's Lines Books, back in 1966. 00:05:29.260 --> 00:05:31.270 align:middle line:84% The titles of other works by Coolidge, 00:05:31.270 --> 00:05:34.720 align:middle line:84% which would be too long of a list to fully enumerate here, 00:05:34.720 --> 00:05:40.360 align:middle line:84% could include, The Bond Sonnets, ING, Space, Polaroid, The 00:05:40.360 --> 00:05:46.090 align:middle line:84% Maintains, Own Face, at Egypt, Solution Passage, This Time 00:05:46.090 --> 00:05:48.880 align:middle line:84% We Are Both, American Ones: Noise 00:05:48.880 --> 00:05:51.520 align:middle line:84% And Its Presentiments, Sound as Thought, 00:05:51.520 --> 00:05:56.170 align:middle line:84% On The Nameways and The Act of Providence. 00:05:56.170 --> 00:05:57.720 align:middle line:84% It's nice to read all those names, 00:05:57.720 --> 00:06:01.780 align:middle line:84% they give a good sense, even from the poetry. 00:06:01.780 --> 00:06:04.180 align:middle line:84% Coolidge has also written a book on jazz and Kerouac, 00:06:04.180 --> 00:06:05.620 align:middle line:90% called Now It's Jazz. 00:06:05.620 --> 00:06:07.840 align:middle line:84% And he's also edited a collection of the writings 00:06:07.840 --> 00:06:10.180 align:middle line:90% of the painter Philip Guston. 00:06:10.180 --> 00:06:13.960 align:middle line:84% In addition to being a prolific producer of words, 00:06:13.960 --> 00:06:17.470 align:middle line:84% Coolidge has also collaborated as both word organizer 00:06:17.470 --> 00:06:21.220 align:middle line:84% and drummer with a variety of fellow poets, visual artists, 00:06:21.220 --> 00:06:22.690 align:middle line:90% and musicians. 00:06:22.690 --> 00:06:24.700 align:middle line:84% He was in the band Serpent Power, 00:06:24.700 --> 00:06:27.880 align:middle line:84% with fellow poet David Meltzer, in the late 1960s 00:06:27.880 --> 00:06:29.570 align:middle line:90% in San Francisco. 00:06:29.570 --> 00:06:31.330 align:middle line:84% He has collaborated with his close friend, 00:06:31.330 --> 00:06:33.550 align:middle line:90% the composer, Alvin Curran. 00:06:33.550 --> 00:06:36.130 align:middle line:84% He's produced tape experiments at Mills College 00:06:36.130 --> 00:06:38.260 align:middle line:84% and produced a radio program called 00:06:38.260 --> 00:06:40.208 align:middle line:84% Words, which is available online, 00:06:40.208 --> 00:06:41.500 align:middle line:90% which you should all listen to. 00:06:41.500 --> 00:06:46.810 align:middle line:84% 17 hours of amazing interviews and programming. 00:06:46.810 --> 00:06:49.270 align:middle line:84% And that interview, or that program 00:06:49.270 --> 00:06:53.920 align:middle line:84% was itself, on words, tech sounds, and music. 00:06:53.920 --> 00:06:55.870 align:middle line:84% He's worked with Bernadette Mayer, 00:06:55.870 --> 00:06:58.420 align:middle line:84% with Michael Palmer, other poets. 00:06:58.420 --> 00:07:01.030 align:middle line:84% In the 1970s, along with Bernadette Mayer, 00:07:01.030 --> 00:07:04.060 align:middle line:84% he helped compose a work called "The Cave Work", 00:07:04.060 --> 00:07:06.940 align:middle line:84% which is a collaborative attempt to write out the everything 00:07:06.940 --> 00:07:09.820 align:middle line:90% work, everything that comes. 00:07:09.820 --> 00:07:11.620 align:middle line:84% He has also recently collaborated 00:07:11.620 --> 00:07:16.570 align:middle line:84% with Thurston Moore, in a series of musical and poetic projects. 00:07:16.570 --> 00:07:22.000 align:middle line:84% If it's not clear already, Clark Coolidge is busy. 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:24.880 align:middle line:84% He's a busy writer, reader, and collaborator, 00:07:24.880 --> 00:07:27.940 align:middle line:84% but most importantly, to my ear, Coolidge 00:07:27.940 --> 00:07:30.040 align:middle line:90% is a voracious listener. 00:07:30.040 --> 00:07:33.670 align:middle line:84% From the micro tensions between single words or even 00:07:33.670 --> 00:07:37.870 align:middle line:84% single syllables, like ing, and word parts, 00:07:37.870 --> 00:07:40.720 align:middle line:84% to the waves, the huge waves of language noise, 00:07:40.720 --> 00:07:43.390 align:middle line:84% inundating us in his longer works, 00:07:43.390 --> 00:07:47.530 align:middle line:84% like the 600 page, Book Beginning What and Ending Away. 00:07:47.530 --> 00:07:50.890 align:middle line:84% He attends to the atmosphere of voices and noises 00:07:50.890 --> 00:07:55.000 align:middle line:84% that surround and define our being in this world. 00:07:55.000 --> 00:07:58.220 align:middle line:84% Words as sounds, sounds as words, 00:07:58.220 --> 00:08:02.150 align:middle line:84% Coolidge asks us, not only to hear language again, 00:08:02.150 --> 00:08:05.000 align:middle line:84% to listen again, in a new and strange way. 00:08:05.000 --> 00:08:08.150 align:middle line:84% He also asks us to attune our listening in new, 00:08:08.150 --> 00:08:11.540 align:middle line:84% not to ignore the materials that compose our lives as speakers, 00:08:11.540 --> 00:08:14.540 align:middle line:84% communicators, and political beings. 00:08:14.540 --> 00:08:16.280 align:middle line:84% One of Coolidge's central concerns 00:08:16.280 --> 00:08:19.310 align:middle line:84% is to develop forms of arrangement, 00:08:19.310 --> 00:08:22.400 align:middle line:84% crystallized layers of word pressure and organization, 00:08:22.400 --> 00:08:26.360 align:middle line:84% that open out beyond the classic lyric poetics of expression. 00:08:26.360 --> 00:08:29.540 align:middle line:84% Rather than a spontaneous overflow of emotion, 00:08:29.540 --> 00:08:34.159 align:middle line:84% we have the oozing, pressurized, pulsing, lava flows 00:08:34.159 --> 00:08:35.539 align:middle line:90% of language. 00:08:35.539 --> 00:08:38.720 align:middle line:84% In his work, we hear collective noisy murmur, 00:08:38.720 --> 00:08:42.049 align:middle line:84% improvisational rhythm and surprise. 00:08:42.049 --> 00:08:43.970 align:middle line:84% In his work that challenges our conception 00:08:43.970 --> 00:08:46.790 align:middle line:84% of what poetry and language is or could be, 00:08:46.790 --> 00:08:49.640 align:middle line:84% and as Coolidge says himself in another poem from Solution 00:08:49.640 --> 00:08:54.470 align:middle line:84% Passage, poetry is strong, stronger than sense, 00:08:54.470 --> 00:08:56.090 align:middle line:90% longer than tense. 00:08:56.090 --> 00:08:58.340 align:middle line:84% More than a habit of wrist, a blister 00:08:58.340 --> 00:09:00.770 align:middle line:90% of finding, a throat to go. 00:09:00.770 --> 00:09:04.610 align:middle line:84% It lands me in blind glance, it hovers my solace. 00:09:04.610 --> 00:09:06.780 align:middle line:90% Welcome, Clark Coolidge. 00:09:06.780 --> 00:09:08.000 align:middle line:90%