But It Says Nothing

By Clark Coolidge b. 1939 Clark Coolidge

But it says nothing. And one is as quiet

as if to say nothing moves me. Then

there is the chair. And one speaks of

the chair sitting at the table.

Scraping against surfaces, opening the mouth.

The object is a piece of thing before. One

shifts in a chair and opens the talk.

And the time it says nothing one moves.

The table is too long as the wall. Not

a thing but it stays and one opens

as a mouth will begin. Speaking of

the table, nothing but to avoid that of

the wall. One could return over and over

to the chair, the wall one is sitting at.

Least ways it says nothing. And the

thing is, it stays still before

speaking of. The object of nothing, even

speech.

Source: Own Face (Green Integer, 2000)

Biography

Born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, experimental poet and jazz musician Clark Coolidge has been connected to both the Language movement and the New York School. His poetry utilizes syntactical and sonic patterns to engage, and generate, meaning. In a 1968 poetics statement, he noted, “Words have a universe of qualities other than those of descriptive relation: Hardness, Density, Sound-Shape, Vector-Force, & Degrees of . . .

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