Stride announce the publication of Peter Finch's new book ANTIBODIES this
week. meaty 128pp paperback, 7.95 pounds, post free from Stride, 11 sylvan
rd, exeter, devon ex4 6ew [USA? 15 dollar bills will get one mailed to you
(no checks!)]
glad Peter's workshop/reading was so good.
Rupert
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Date: Mon, 13 Oct 1997 10:53:08 BST
From: Ira Lightman <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Clark Coolidge/ lyric language
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Hallo everyone, I'm a new bug
Can I offer some thoughts on Clark Coolidge's
Book of During's use of "extreme sex words" in
mantra repetition, attached to other sentences
not using extreme sex words (like the Cantos
and quotations from non-English languages, the
Book of During is known for them tho they make
but 10 to 20 percent of all the words in the
book)? I'm copying these from a mail I first
wrote to Tim Atkins:
hypotheses: the extreme sex words, cock, cunt, fuck,
tend to be used to signify the first time with a new
person, eg more predominantly used like that by B.
Mayer in her life of sudden crushes on folk, and then
poems and books about relationships, because they
are about love, tend to use more soothing or
euphemistic or anatomical terms. Yet typically for
Coolidge, I think Book of During (which I think is
about a long relationship, lots of sex with the
person you love, know, trust) jumbles it all up,
says it is still possible to have that "I don't know
you" virginal self-consciousness in mid-relationship,
asks what love is, what do you cross over into, is
across a bridge that burns behind you, does your culture
burn it behind you and you accede when you could
resist, make your own convention etc. Or anyway it's
a good formalist exercise in changing the feel of an
essentially *lyric* term, ie you must use it only in
poems about present-moment sensation, fragmentary
feeling, an aspect of experience (ie the sex in a
love relationship) - the repetition of it feels as
sickly as most other lyric terms (love, rose, heart,
lightning, kiss) yet Coolidge pushes that through,
like one of his masters Stein does "a rose is a rose
is a rose"...
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