Clark Coolidge as per Bill Berkson

Bill Berkson on Clark Coolidge

The poems in Clark’s Selected Poems, forthcoming from Station Hill, were written over 23 years in such places as Providence (1962–66); New York (1966); Providence/Cambridge, Mass. (1966–67); San Francisco (1967–70); Hancock, Mass. (1970–85); and Rome (1984–85). The fact that in many of these towns and cities Clark lived on the top or side of a hill suggests a quality of remove and gazing on things from above. From the heights each poem appears to take its own peculiar plunge. The insistent musings, dis- criminations, glees, puzzlements, irritability, those sardonic drive-by puns, and philosophic remarks that register almost as stage whispers without claiming any prior authority, all signify a powerful affection for the world as encompassed, and ultimately, Clark’s will to articulate that fabled specific infinity he has had his eye on, the “quest to know anything, write everything,” the Chapel Perilous of these poems.