On the Nameways

Poetry. Following Volume One of ON THE NAMEWAYS, this newest work by this modern master is, as the name suggests, partly a meditation on the fact of names: Antonin Artaud in his shoulderpads/ leave and you can say hello/...Karl Malden in the moral void (from Arsenic and Old Blemishes). For Coolidge, the figure of the improvising jazz soloist becomes a model for the poet in the moment of writing -- darting in and out of motivic possibilities, exploring all registers of the instrument, and seeking, always, to sustain a flow of fresh ideas. In poem after poem he produces lines of abstract, bright, musical phrasing. Coolidge was a language poet before there was language poetry -- Michael Leddy, World Literature Today.