My Vocabulary Did This to Me Read online

  my vocabulary did this to me

  wesleyan poetry

  my vocabulary did this to me

  The Collected Poetry of

  JACK SPICER

  Edited by Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian

  Wesleyan University Press Middletown, Connecticut

  Published by Wesleyan University Press,

  Middletown, CT 06459

  www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

  © 2008 by the Estate of Jack Spicer

  Introduction © 2008 by Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian

  All rights reserved.

  First Wesleyan paperback 2010

  Printed in the United States of America 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN for the paperback edition: 978-0-8195-7090-1

  Frontispiece illustration: Jack Spicer at the 6 Gallery

  opening in San Francisco, 1954. Photo © Robert Berg.

  Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.

  This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Spicer, Jack.

  My vocabulary did this to me : the collected poetry of Jack Spicer / edited by Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian.

  p. cm. — (Wesleyan poetry)

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978–0-8195–6887–8 (cloth : alk. paper)

  I. Gizzi, Peter. II. Killian, Kevin. III. Title.

  PS3569.P47M9 2008

  811’.54—dc22

  2008024997

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  About This Edition

  I. (1945–1956)

  BERKELEY RENAISSANCE (1945–1950)

  Berkeley in Time of Plague

  A Girl’s Song

  Homosexuality

  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Landscape

  An Apocalypse for Three Voices

  One Night Stand

  An Answer to Jaime de Angulo

  A Lecture in Practical Aesthetics

  Dialogue Between Intellect and Passion

  A Night in Four Parts (Second version)

  Orpheus in Hell

  Orpheus After Eurydice

  Orpheus’ Song to Apollo

  Troy Poem

  “We find the body difficult to speak . . .”

  “They are selling the midnight papers . . .”

  “Any fool can get into an ocean . . .”

  The Scrollwork on the Casket

  The Dancing Ape

  Imaginary Elegies (I, II, III)

  Psychoanalysis: An Elegy

  MINNESOTA POEMS (1950–1952)

  Minneapolis: Indian Summer

  Watching a TV Boxing Match in October

  Portrait of an Artist

  Sonnet for the Beginning of Winter

  On Reading Last Year’s Love Poems

  Orpheus in Athens

  Train Song for Gary

  A Second Train Song for Gary

  BERKELEY / SAN FRANCISCO (1952–1955)

  A Postscript to the Berkeley Renaissance

  A Poem for Dada Day at The Place, April 1, 1955

  “The window is a sword . . .”

  Imaginary Elegies (IV)

  NEW YORK / BOSTON (1955–1956)

  IInd Phase of the Moon

  IIIrd Phase of the Moon

  IVth Phase of the Moon

  Some Notes on Whitman for Allen Joyce

  The Day Five Thousand Fish Died Along the Charles River

  Hibernation—After Morris Graves

  Éternuement

  Song for the Great Mother

  “The city of Boston . . .”

  Five Words for Joe Dunn on His Twenty-Second Birthday

  Birdland, California

  “Imagine Lucifer . . .”

  The Song of the Bird in the Loins

  Babel 3

  They Murdered You: An Elegy on the Death of Kenneth Rexroth

  A Poem to the Reader of the Poem

  Song for Bird and Myself

  A Poem Without a Single Bird in It

  The Unvert Manifesto and Other Papers Found in the Rare Book Room of the Boston Public Library in the Handwriting of Oliver Charming. By S.

  II. (1956–1965)

  SAN FRANCISCO (1956–1965)

  Poetry as Magic Workshop Questionnaire

  AFTER LORCA

  ADMONITIONS

  A BOOK OF MUSIC

  Socrates

  A Poem for Dada Day at The Place, April 1, 1958

  BILLY THE KID

  For Steve Jonas Who Is in Jail for Defrauding a Book Club

  FIFTEEN FALSE PROPOSITIONS AGAINST GOD

  LETTERS TO JAMES ALEXANDER

  APOLLO SENDS SEVEN NURSERY RHYMES TO JAMES ALEXANDER

  A BIRTHDAY POEM FOR JIM (AND JAMES) ALEXANDER

  Imaginary Elegies (V, VI)

  “Dignity is a part of a man . . .”

  HELEN: A REVISION

  THE HEADS OF THE TOWN UP TO THE AETHER

  LAMENT FOR THE MAKERS

  A RED WHEELBARROW

  Three Marxist Essays

  THE HOLY GRAIL

  GOLEM

  MAP POEMS

  LANGUAGE

  BOOK OF MAGAZINE VERSE

  Chronology

  Notes on the Poems

  Bibliography

  Index of Titles

  Index of First Lines

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many helped us in the years during which we edited this book. First of all, we would like to thank Robin Blaser, who shepherded these materials for forty years and whose edition of Spicer’s Collected Books (1975) was a landmark volume. Blaser’s kindness is legendary, but it’s real. The late Donald Allen, Spicer’s friend and editor, answered a hundred questions with patience. The present volume builds on the work he did in the 1957 “San Francisco Scene” issue of Evergreen Review, in his anthology The New American Poetry, and in One Night Stand, the volume of Spicer’s shorter poems he published in 1980. To the painter Fran Herndon, we owe the survival of The Holy Grail manuscript, as well as the “Fix” sequence known as Golem, and the files of J, the magazine she and Spicer edited in 1959. Lewis Ellingham established chronologies, elucidated texts, sought out informants, shared his knowledge intimate and arcane, kept the flame alive—an invaluable resource in every conceivable way.

  A special thanks to Anthony Bliss and Tanya Hollis of the Bancroft Library; without their generosity and vision this book could not have come to pass. At the Bancroft we owe thanks all around, and especially to Bonnie Bearden, Steven Black, Bonnie Hardwick, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Teresa Salazar, Dean Smith, and Susan Snyder. At the Special Collections and Rare Books Department of Simon Fraser University Library in Burnaby, British Columbia, we were fortunate in working with the late Charles Watts and with his successor, Tony Power. Robert Bertholf and Michael Basinski showed us many kindnesses at the Lockwood Library at SUNY Buffalo.

  Thanks to Aaron Kunin for his work transcribing and inputting manuscript material newly discovered at the Bancroft in the summer of 2004. Similar help came from a crew of artists and poets including Brandon Brown, Simon Evans, Kelly Holt, David Hull, Charles Legere, Jason Morris, John Sakkis, and Logan Ryan Smith.

  Many others—too many to name here—aided us with information about Spicer’s life and work, alerted us to potential leads, provided cultural context for this material, made comments on the text, put us up while we were away from home on this quest, published our preliminary findings, and/or answered questions cheerfully over the past ten years. Beyond those already mentione
d, we would like to thank Christopher Alexander, Joshua Beckman, Dan Bouchard, George Bowering, the late Jess Collins, the late Robert Creeley, Clark Coolidge, Beverly Dahlen, Michael Davidson, Richard Deming, Steve Dickison, Nathaniel Dorsky, Ernesto Edwards, Steve Evans, Thomas Evans, the late Landis Everson, David Farwell, Dora FitzGerald, Nemi Frost, Jack Gilbert, John Granger, George Herms, Susan Howe, Andrew Hoyem, Lisa Jarnot, Kent Jones, Daniel Katz, Joanne Kyger, Nathaniel Mackey, Michael McClure, Ben Mazer, W. S. Merwin, Alvin William Moore, Jennifer Moxley, Barbara Nicholls, Miriam Nichols, Geoffrey O’Brien, Michael Ondaatje, John Palattella, Ariel Parkinson, Kristin Prevallet, Peter and Meredith Quartermain, Tom Raworth, Adrienne Rich, Jim Roberts, Jennifer Scappettone, Don Share, Ron Silliman, Rod Smith, Matthew Stadler, George Stanley, Ellen Tallman, Glenn Todd, John Emil Vincent, Tom Vogler and Mary-Kay Gamel, Christopher Wagstaff, Anne Waldman, Rosmarie Waldrop, Emily Warn, and Scott Watson.

  For their assistance in final manuscript and galley preparation we thank Sean Casey, Matthew Gagnon, Jay Johnson, Aaron Kunin, Steve Zultanski, and especially Lori Shine and Elizabeth Willis for their crucial work.

  Thanks also to the folks at Wesleyan University Press and University Press of New England, but primarily to Suzanna Tamminen, Director and Editor-in-Chief at Wesleyan, for her good will, vision, and ongoing commitment to publishing Spicer’s work.

  Since we began working on this collection, a number of poems have appeared in the following publications, sometimes in altered form: The Chicago Review, “They Murdered You: An Elegy on the Death of Kenneth Rexroth”; Eleven Eleven, “IInd Phase of the Moon,” “IIIrd Phase of the Moon,” “IVth Phase of the Moon”; Fulcrum, “Imagine Lucifer . . .”; Golden Handcuffs Review, “Map Poems”; Harper’s, “The city of Boston . . .”; Jubilat, “Letters to James Alexander”; The Massachusetts Review, “Homosexuality,” “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Landscape,” “The city of Boston . . .”; The Nation, “Two Poems for the Nation”; Nest, “For Steve Jonas Who Is in Jail for Defrauding a Book Club,” “A Birthday Poem for Jim (and James) Alexander”; The Poker, “The city of Boston . . .”; and Poetry, “Any fool can get into an ocean . . . ,” “A Second Train Song for Gary,” “Imagine Lucifer . . . ,” “A Poem for Dada Day at The Place, April 1, 1958,” and “Five Poems from ‘Helen: A Revision.’” Our thanks to the editors involved.

  And more than we can say, thanks to Dodie Bellamy and Elizabeth Willis.

  INTRODUCTION

  In 1965, when Jack Spicer wrote “get those words out of your mouth and into your heart,” he voiced an imperative to both poet and reader addressing the perilous honesty that the lived life of the poem demands. This admonition is startling coming from a poet who claimed that his poems originated outside himself, who insisted that a poet was no more than a radio transmitting messages; a poet who professed an almost monkish practice of dictation, from “Martians” no less, who rejected what he called “the big lie of the personal”; and yet in the process he created one of the most indelible and enduring voices in American poetry. This voice, and its appeal, are all the more notable since Spicer was never fully embraced within either the official culture or counter-culture of his period. Still, in the past forty years, Spicer has had a broad and lasting effect on a diverse range of writers nationally and internationally; his impact on contemporary writing will undoubtedly be felt for generations to come.

  Born John Lester Spicer on January 30, 1925, in Los Angeles, Jack Spicer was the elder of two sons. His parents, Dorothy Clause and John Lovely Spicer, were Midwesterners who met and married in Hollywood and ran a small hotel business. He attended Fairfax High School and, when ill health gave him 4-F draft status, he worked variously as a private detective, a defense worker, and an extra in Hollywood studio films.1 Spicer spent two years at the University of Redlands in San Bernardino before transferring north to the Berkeley campus of the University of California in 1945. He had started writing poetry at fourteen, and at Berkeley he summarized his poetic influences for his professor, Josephine Miles. His parents, he told her, had been (“though naively and uncritically”) fond of the early Imagists—Amy Lowell, Carl Sandburg, H.D., Pound—and had, he claimed, taught him to recite Vachel Lindsay’s “The Chinese Nightingale” (1917) by the time he was three:

  “How, how,” he said. “Friend Chang,” I said,

  “San Francisco sleeps as the dead—

  Ended license, lust and play:

  Why do you iron the night away?

  Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound,

  With a tick and a wail till dawn comes round.

  While the monster shadows glower and creep,

  What can be better for man than sleep?”2

  He knew the nonsense verse of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear “from childhood up”—all his life he was to remain devoted to so-called children’s literature—and at fourteen he discovered the Uranian mysteries of Oscar Wilde and A. E. Housman. Rimbaud and Dickinson, he wrote, “burst upon me like a bombshell when I was fifteen.” The astonishments kept coming: by the time he was twenty-one he knew the masters of modern jazz as well as he knew the new romanticisms of T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, and Stefan George. Nights spent listening to Billie Holiday and Art Tatum on Central Avenue or the Sunset Strip fueled Spicer’s intimations of an international modernism centered in California, and gave heft to his 1949 manifesto, “The Poet and Poetry,” in which he avowed, “We must become singers, become entertainers. [. . .] There is more of Orpheus in Sophie Tucker than in R. P. Blackmur; we have more to learn from George M. Cohan than from John Crowe Ransom.”3

  Spicer spent five years at UC Berkeley, receiving his B.A. in 1947 and his M.A. in 1950. He studied Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and German to prepare for a career in linguistics, and took a course or two in playwriting, adapting Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown and Mary Butts’s modernist grail hunt Armed with Madness to the stage. While taking classes with the German medievalist Ernst Kantorowicz and the poet Josephine Miles, Spicer quickly met other gay male poets, including Robin Blaser, Robert Duncan, and Landis Everson. Spicer would later cite his birth year as 1946, the year he met Blaser and Duncan; out of the intense fraternity of these bookish young men was born the “Berkeley Renaissance,” as they sometimes called it, half in irony, half sincerely.

  His poetry of this period is, by turns, elegiac, lyrical, modernist, and intensely homoerotic. Spicer’s best-known poems of the Berkeley period became the first “Imaginary Elegies,” which gained him fame when they appeared, years later, in Donald Allen’s influential anthology The New American Poetry (1960). “When I praise the sun or any bronze god derived from it,” he wrote in the first elegy, “Don’t think I wouldn’t rather praise the very tall blond boy / Who ate all of my potato-chips at the Red Lizard. / It’s just that I won’t see him when I open my eyes / And I will see the sun.”4

  A self-proclaimed anarchist, Spicer found his academic career stalled after he refused to sign the Loyalty Oath of 1950, a provision of the Sloan-Levering Act that required all California state employees (even graduate teaching assistants at Berkeley) to swear loyalty to the United States.5 As a result, Spicer left Berkeley with an M.A. and spent much of 1950–1952 teaching at the University of Minnesota. During this time, he made his first trip to the East Coast to attend the Language Society of America conference in New York, and with David Reed, his mentor at Berkeley, published a scholarly article in linguistics.

  He returned to Berkeley in 1952 and continued work on a Ph.D. he was never to finish. The early fifties were a period of retrenchment and experiment for Spicer. His production slowed, and he seemed more committed to a protracted examination of the “miracle” of the Berkeley period than to what was happening at the moment. This period of stasis ended abruptly in the spring of 1953 when, confounded by injustice and homophobia, Spicer plunged headlong into political activism with the Mattachine Society, an early gay liberation organization with headquarters in Los Angeles and chapters in Oakland, San Francis
co, and Berkeley. Organizing, overseeing committees, writing white papers and mission statements on a statewide basis, serving as a delegate to a constitutional convention: all this gave him an insider’s view of politics as they are lived. His fervor eventually alienated the backroom “captains” who had thought they could keep him in line, and a conservative backlash forced his resignation by the end of the year. Abruptly he moved to San Francisco where a new job awaited him as a lecturer in humanities at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute). Here he began intimate association with visual artists, a group with whom he had had little previous contact. At the time San Francisco was undergoing a surge of vital, experimental painting and art practice, and CSFA was at the heart of it. Among Spicer’s students (he was only twenty-eight, in fact younger than some of them) were an up-and-coming generation of brilliant artists from all disciplines. With five of them he founded his own avant-garde emporium, the influential “6” Gallery on Fillmore Street which became the site for the now famous first reading of Ginsberg’s Howl and the official kickoff of the Beat Generation.6

  Having spent two years perfecting a full-length drama, Troilus, Spicer once again left San Francisco during the summer of 1955 to make a career in New York City. It was the age of Poets’ Theater; in New York and in Boston experimental poets were finding audiences by taking to the stage. Established modernists like T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, and Archibald MacLeish were seeing their work on Broadway, some of them even winning Pulitzer Prizes. With the aid of a Berkeley friend, the painter John Button, Spicer encountered the poets of the New York School and their circle, among them Frank O’Hara, Barbara Guest, John Ashbery, James Schuyler, and Joe LeSueur.7 Not finding suitable work and unhappy, Spicer wrote his friend Allen Joyce: “Like most primitive cultures, New York has no feeling for nonsense. Wit is as far as they can go. That is what I miss the most, other than you, and what is slowly pulling my identity apart. No one speaks Martian, no one insults people arbitrarily, there is, to put it simply and leave it, no violence of the mind and of the heart, no one screams in the elevator.”8 Within months, Spicer left New York for Boston. While Robin Blaser worked at Harvard’s Widener Library, he helped Spicer secure a position on the staff of the Rare Book Room at the Boston Public Library, though this position lasted less than a year in 1955–56.