COOLIDGE, Clark

Very much a progenitor of Language-Centered Poetry, Coolidge began, in Flag Flutter & U.S. Electric (1966), with forays into Post-Ashberyian poetic structuring in which he attempted to realize semblances of literary coherence without using such traditional organizing devices as meter, metaphor, exposition, symbolism, consistent allusion, or declarative statements. His most avant-garde poetry appears in Space (1970), including an untitled poem beginning by an I that contains individually isolated...