I have owned my copy of Clark Coolidge's "Own Face" for several years (5, 7, 10?). At some point I began to mark poems that I particularly liked with a check mark at the corner of the page. I returned periodically to the book, marking more and more poems, until most were marked. I am now starting a second time, marking those that I like even more than the rest. I had a sort of epiphany when I realized that the way to read his poetry was to treat every poem as worthy of serious attention. My initial approach was to see him as a "hit and miss" poet, largely improvisational, and withhold my approval until I was convinced that I was reading a fully realized poem. Part of my resistance was my assumption that noone who wrote so much could possibly write so well so much of the time.

I am doing the same with "Solution Passage" and "The Crystal Text." I have selected 73 poems from the former (out of a much greater number). I love Coolidge's late 1970s and early 1980s period. I'm not sure I get "Mesh" and "Odes of Roba" yet. Nor have I studied his early work extensively. He is prolific, but all is required reading; despite repetitions, nothing is truly redundant. Why is it I don't own "Mine," one of my favorite of his books?