Radium Out Cold
Author: Clark Coolidge
Publisher: Lithic Press (2024)
Newest collection from prolific American poet, Clark Coolidge, author of more than fifty books of poetry including, The Crystal Text, Poet, Now It's Jazz: Writings on Kerouac & the Sounds, At Egypt, Alien Tatters and The Land of All Time. At times associated with the New York School or with Language Poetry, Coolidge has forged a unique career, almost heroically following his own prodigious interests and curiosity.
This is a collection of a kind of pure poetry that reflects the the writer's life work of interacting with language. For those who are drawn in, Coolidge's work takes on an importance that permeates how we think and hear and see and live, complete with an ongoing sense of play and utter joy in the manipulation of words. Each poem presents the possibility to experience something outside accepted structures of meaning. In a time of pervasive finger wagging, Coolidge doesn't tell anyone anything, but invites the reader to hear something never heard, to think what's not been thought, to set off into dream, to discover a new world, to make a new world.