This could be Coolidge's best book. I have owned a copy of it for years and have read it many times. Coolidge's ear for language is unique, and the high-point of his work (for me) are the series of books he wrote in the 1970s and 1980s.

Moving away somewhat from his earlier, more experimental work, Coolidge here approaches a more personal and lyrical style--"approaches" being the key word here--this is radical, exciting poetry that graduates of MFA programs will abhor.

Here's the one that most uniquely combines Coolidge's Kerouac-esque road poetics (ambulant geographies) with the 70's and 80's linguistic concerns, a la Wittgenstein, etc. What Joyce was to Dublin, Coolidge is to Vegas. Purchase several.

Clark Coolidge's writing is some of the most thoroughly modern I've ever known. With subjects ranging from plasticine to a bolas, & with another interesting collage thing (visual art, not the poetry, though the poetry is kind of like that too...), this is a great book to have.

Jim Brodey lit up the Lower East Side of New York City for thirty years. Alongside contempories like Ted Berrigan, Anselm Hollo and Ron Padgett, Brodey helped to change the shape of what we consider 'modern' poetry.

The Heart Of The Breath is Brodeys' final, magnificent statement to the world of poetics. In these pieces, Brodey rearranges the world to fit into his broad and dynamic parameters - which include anything - literally - ANYthing. Leaving no stone unturned, fearless and bold, Brodey walks through these pages like a lion stalking his prey. These poems are filled with humor. These poems are filled with pathos. These poems are strange. These poems stalk off into the fog and dissapear forever.

These poems breath.

The bee-thrum of consciousness at work, this book is about the words in it. If ours were a just society, all children would have to recite Coolidge's "St. Jerome" poem. He writes down what he sees by "the lights in here," and you just might recognize these strata of language-thought/thought-language from your own bewildered experiences of thrownness. Read it, and if you like it, pass out free copies to your congressman and his staff.

This work is a record of a period of life spent in the presence of an object-a crystal which, writes Coolidge, "has thirteen facets" (as Coolidge's name has thirteen letters)and which comes to dominate Coolidge's reflections. Coolidge writes with humor and authority, and the verse evokes, at various times, a scientific investigation, a Kerouac-influenced stream of consciousness, and an absurdist collage. An excellent example of how contemporary poetry can remain vital by drawing inspiration from unlikely sources.

Can't say this's my favorite Coolidge--I'd go with Own Face. But it's more than good enough to send the average reader of New Yorker verse scuttling for the nearest Pulitzer Prize-sanctioned mediocrity.

This book starts with an outstanding idea: the influence of jazz on Kerouac and (perhaps) the influence of Kerouac on jazz. I was totally disappointed. Author is largely incoherent. The antithesis of Kerouac's clarity. Outstanding idea for another author/another attempt.

This is a collection of older 'non-fiction' writings, not a new work of poetry. I already had most of the contents which I had copied from journals and such, but some like the complete review of Kerouac's letters and the read-through of Visions Of Cody were new discoveries for me. Worth getting, but not what I was hoping for.

Coolidge's notes on Kerouac are both personal (discovering On The Road as a student) and critical (with particular emphasis on Visions of Cody), but he focuses mainly on Kerouac's writing about jazz and on his prose as jazz, pulling some wonderful examples. The more general second half of the book--a miscellany of Coolidge's own lyrical and authoritative writings about jazz--is fun reading; I think his description of Joe Dodge's drum sounding "like a door slammed at the end of a long hall way" is as good as any of Kerouac's similar inspirations. Though he writes well about live jazz, the meandering long section, "Listener's Reach," culled from Coolidge's letters to David Meltzer, has some of the best writing I have encountered on the special pleasures and frustrations of listening to jazz records--their great or maddening acoustic eccentricities, the very personal meanings of repeated listenings. I'd call Now It's Jazz an enjoyable piece of Kerouac criticism and a notable addition to the short list of really good, imaginative books about jazz.