Product Description
In this unique book a late twentieth century poet and musician writes about one of the most enduring and influential members of midcentury's Beat Generation. Perhaps Jack Kerouac's most famous phrase is his description of his own writing as "spontaneous bop prosody," and Coolidge understands that prosody, the secret, still underground language of America. Nobody writes about Kerouac with such attention to his sound, and Coolidge's prose is as remarkable as Kerouac's. Simultaneously criticism and poetry, this is writing that returns the reader to the utter originality of Kerouac's improvisations ("blues/and haikoos"). Poet to poet, each listening to and hearing the life of the other, Coolidge and Kerouac breathe together in the poems of their prose.

Now It's Jazz includes an afterword by David Meltzer, poet and jazz anthologist, in whose correspondence with Coolidge many of these ideas first found expression. With the late Tina Meltzer on vibes, Clark (drums) and David (guitar) formed a trio known as Mix, successor to their 1960s band Serpent Power. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Nice 'N' Easy
This book is terrific for what it is: a run of occasional loveletters to the 'Kerouac sound' and the musics it grew out of. Consider how pretentious and insidey this book could have been: Coolidge is an astounding poet who's infused the time forms of jazz into his writing for decades. He's also a seasoned drummer with an encyclopedic knowledge of all that swings. But "Now It's Jazz" never once made me feel like a square, or like Coolidge holds the key to some esoteric kingdom you'll never enter without him. More often than not he steps aside from his own experience to let the music and the language he uses to describe it do the talking (the special way he writes about jazz in spatial terms reveals a lot about his own work). Most of these pieces sound spontaneous, like Coolidge wants to enact in the writing the speed and alertness he loves so much in Kerouac or Rollins. I was a little surprised by his tastes in jazz, which balance somewhere in the mid-Fifties bop he first discovered as a kid. Thought he'd be more "out there." But that's part of the book's charm: Nice and Easy, not (here) trying to push things forward, just looking back warmly on the sounds he's loved.

Disappointment
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.

Lyrical and Authoritative
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 thebook--a miscellany of Coolidge's own lyrical and authoritative writingsabout jazz--is fun reading; I think his description of Joe Dodge's drumsounding "like a door slammed at the end of a long hall way" isas good as any of Kerouac's similar inspirations. Though he writes wellabout live jazz, the meandering long section, "Listener's Reach,"culled from Coolidge's letters to David Meltzer, has some of the bestwriting I have encountered on the special pleasures and frustrations oflistening to jazz records--their great or maddening acousticeccentricities, the very personal meanings of repeated listenings. I'd callNow It's Jazz an enjoyable piece of Kerouac criticism and a notableaddition to the short list of really good, imaginative books about jazz.

collection of old not a new
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. ... Read more

Product Description
The turbulent lives and fates of the Russian people in the first half of the twentieth century are reflected and concentrated in the lives and works of the poets. Whether exiled in Paris or existing precariously in Moscow, whether banished to some Siberian hard labour camp or living in poverty in some other isolated wilderness, an intangible web of interrelationships seemed to bind their destinies to one another. This book is an exploration of that web, and provides a unique insight into the remarkable constellation of poets who emerged to create Russia's 'Silver Age' of poetry, and who continued its development through the twentieth century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Wrong description for the book
amazon's description is clearly not the book listed. The author is different and the subject matter and general type of work is nothing that either the illustrator or the author of the book in the picture would have anything to do with. By the way, if you go to the page where you can "help" with the listing, there is no possible place to state the very simple fact that you have described the WRONG ------- BOOK. ... Read more

Product Description
Poetry & Prose: Gary Snyder, Robert Duncan, Dick Kennedy, James Koller, Paul Blackburn, Philip Van Aver, Joanne Kyger, Allen Ginsberg, Richard Brautigan, Larry Eigner, Anselm Hollo, Richard Duerden, Pamela Millward, Tom Pickard, Philip Whalen, David Sandberg, Seymour Faust, Clark Coolidge, Irene Schramm and William Brown . ... Read more

Product Description
Poetry. "The second printing of the first edition"(according to Potes & Poets) of this classic text by an Americanmaster. "Drift, a homonym as seen to, lists the cups./ In cones,parts. Of the pods, to step, as goes./ Rings, feet in time, inch. Thelayers head./ It may be, houses. They part. Jet till trap./ It buildsin, cuts, looks. Cars, to strike,/ clock pipes. Shows, houses, variesin stratum./ Best streams and goes, a road. To the here/ part may beforms as seen. Faces, heaves,/ quartzes. In pure parting look, fans,/the drumlins." AMERICAN ONES, SOUND AS THOUGHT and ROVA IMPROVISATIONSare among the many books by Clark Coolidge carried bySPD. Saddlestapled chapbook. ... Read more