88 Sonnets

"Clark Coolidge is a one-man avant-garde."—Peter Gizzi Clark Coolidge's embrace of the sonnet form is a gemlike amalgam of narrative urge, wacky name-dropping, and pure visuality. Coolidge's legendary proliferation—as many as ten sonnets in a single day—marries the stunning variety of his intellect on the mountaintop of formal inquiry. **"LIBRARY OF HAY"** *So slow death oft the onyx dolls each in its own lab colors rollicking encores who's there? do you want your museum room infiltrated? only the singing parts terrible loss of air raid powder entanglements poled on kapok the last to be heard? this ploy of dolls irradiated heads and curls of coffin wood death is always plural here? stolid anyway someway still enters the frontway through the water door to Manikin Lake the throttles held down there you went to hair school against my wisdom thus the remnants spelled out there then coded there* **Clark Coolidge** was born in Providence, Rhode Island. Though associated with the Language Poets, his work predates the movement and despite close contact with many of them he remains distinct from any movement, literary or political. The author of more than twenty books of verse and prose, he is also the editor of *Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations*.