The Crystal Text

Clark Coolidge’s book-length meditation on a crystal—long considered a masterpiece of American avant-garde poetry—returns in a new edition.

“No other poet ever has so exquisitely, and sometimes also turbulently, written sheer sonic wonder into poetry.”—Lyn Hejinian, author of My Life and My Life in the Nineties

In the summer of 1982, Clark Coolidge received an unexpected gift of a crystal; small, clear, entirely unexceptional, the crystal nonetheless provoked the poet into writing what has lo...