by Jack Spicer
“Any fool can get into an ocean . . .”* (p. 23). JSP 2004 ms. used as copytext.
The Scrollwork on the Casket (p. 24). ONS used as copytext. First published in Berkeley Miscellany 2 (1949): 31–32.
The Dancing Ape (p. 25). ONS used as copytext. First published in Evergreen Review 1. 2 “The San Francisco Scene” (1957): 52. JSP 2004 ms. as “To Robbie.”
Imaginary Elegies (I, II, III) (p. 26). ONS used as copytext. Elegies I to IV first published in The New American Poetry, ed. Donald M. Allen (New York: Grove Press, 1960). Earlier versions of the first four elegies can be found in the Exact Change Yearbook No. 1: 1995, ed. Peter Gizzi (Boston: Exact Change / Manchester: Carcanet, 1995).
Although the “Imaginary Elegies” were published in their entirety (I-VI) in ONS, we have chosen to present them here organized chronologically by date of composition. The first three were begun in the late 1940s; the fourth elegy was written in 1955, and the fifth and sixth elegies were not composed until 1959. From the fourth elegy onward, the poems are acutely aware of being compositions in time, which gives them an antiphonal quality, calling back and forth through the years.
Psychoanalysis: An Elegy (p. 31). ONS used as copytext. First published in Evergreen Review 1.2 “The San Francisco Scene” (1957): 56–57.
Minneapolis: Indian Summer (p. 37). ONS used as copytext. First published in ManRoot 10 (Fall 1974): 103. JSP 2004 ms. as “Indian Summer.”
Watching a TV Boxing Match in October (p. 37). ONS used as copytext. First published in City Lights 5 (Spring 1955):11.
Portrait of an Artist (p. 38). ONS used as copytext. First published in ManRoot 10 (Fall 1974): 106.
Sonnet for the Beginning of Winter (p. 38). ONS used as copytext. First published as “Sonnet for Gary” in ManRoot 10 (Fall 1974): 105.
Gary Bottone was a young man Spicer met at a Berkeley party in the summer of 1951. Temporarily home among friends after spending the first of two years at the University of Minnesota, Spicer fell in love with him quickly, and once he returned to Minnesota Gary’s absence made the heart grow fonder. “Younger, less bohemian, less literary and less ‘experienced’ than any of Jack’s Berkeley friends” (as he described himself in a 1984 letter to Lew Ellingham quoted in Poet Be Like God), Bottone elicited a number of tender love poems and letters from Spicer, but the relationship petered out when they were both living in the same place. The following might prove of interest, with its references to another sort of loyalty oath, one to which Spicer ultimately gave his life (see Introduction, n. 5).
Dear Gary,
Somehow your letter was no surprise (and I think you knew that it was no surprise or you would have tried to break the news more gently); somehow I think we understand what the other is going to say long before we say it—a proof of love and, I think, a protection against misunderstanding. So I’ve been expecting this letter for five weeks now—and I still don’t know how to answer it.
Bohemia is a dreadful, wonderful place. It is full of hideous people and beautiful poetry. It would be wrong of me to drag a person I love into such a place against his will. Unless you walk into it freely, and with open despairing eyes, you can’t even see the windows. And yet I can’t leave Bohemia myself to come to you—Bohemia is inside of me, and in a sense is me, was the price I paid, the oath I signed to write poetry.
I think that someday you’ll enter Bohemia—- not for me (I’m not worth the price, no human being is), but for poetry—to see the windows and maybe blast a few yourself through the rocks of hell. I’ll be there waiting for you, my arms open to receive you.
But let’s have these letters go on, whether it be days, years, or never before I see you. We can still love each other although we cannot see each other. We will be no farther apart when I’m in Berkeley than we were when I was in Minneapolis. And we can continue to love each other, by letter, from alien worlds.
Love,
Jack
On Reading Last Year’s Love Poems (p. 39). ONS used as copytext. First published in Caterpillar 12 (July 1970): 69.
Orpheus in Athens (p. 39). Published in ONS as “The boy had never seen an honest man . . . .” Here used as copytext with title from JSP 2004 ms.
Train Song for Gary (p. 40). ONS used as copytext. First published as “Lyric for Gary” in ManRoot 10 (Fall 1974): 105.
A Second Train Song for Gary* (p. 41). JSP 2004 ms. used as copytext.
A Postscript to the Berkeley Renaissance (p. 45). ONS used as copytext. First published in ManRoot 10 (Fall 1974): 107.
A Poem for Dada Day at The Place, April 1, 1955 (p. 46). ONS used as copytext. JSP 2004 ms. as “A Protest Against a Dada Party in The Place on April 1, 1955.”
“The window is a sword . . .”* (p. 47). JSP 2004 used as copytext. First appeared in truncated form in Ironwood 28 (Fall 1986): 206, with this note: “Nearly final version in the handwriting of Jack Spicer.” The full version was discovered in a 1955 notebook for Troilus.
Imaginary Elegies (IV) (p. 48). ONS used as copytext. First published in The New American Poetry, ed. Donald M. Allen (New York: Grove Press, 1960). See earlier note for elegies I to III.
IInd Phase of the Moon* (p. 53). JSP 2004 ms. used as copytext.
The “Phases of the Moon” was a serial poem Spicer worked on during his short stay in New York City in 1955, along with “Some Notes on Whitman for Allen Joyce.” A few years later, Spicer compiled a list of his poetry for a projected volume of selected poems that was never published. Three of the poems on Spicer’s list (#55, #56, #57) were the “IInd Phase of the Moon,” “IIIrd Phase of the Moon,” and “IVth Phase of the Moon.”
IIIrd Phase of the Moon* (p. 53). JSP 2004 ms. used as copytext.
IVth Phase of the Moon* (p. 54). JSP 2004 ms. used as copytext.
Some Notes on Whitman for Allen Joyce (p. 55). ONS used as copytext.
In light of newly discovered material, we may now read “Some Notes on Whitman” as a culmination of a particular line in Spicer’s poetry that has hitherto gone unnoticed because it has been, for all intents and purposes, unavailable. With the publication of the fuller version of “The window is a sword . . .” and the three extant “Phases of the Moon,” we can trace the emergence and eventual disappearance of an ecstatic, revelatory style, one that joins elements of the French symbolist prose poem to the classical choral verse Spicer had been immersed in during the years of writing Troilus and his other verse drama. After New York this vein in his work goes underground (though perhaps the fragment “The city of Boston. . . ,” marks its brief return). Eventually the “Explanatory Notes” to “Homage to Creeley,” “A Fake Novel About the Life of Arthur Rimbaud,” and “A Textbook of Poetry” would take up this mode again with new and recombinant energy.
The Day Five Thousand Fish Died Along the Charles River (p. 56). ONS used as copytext. First appeared in Floating Bear 34 (1967): n.p.
Hibernation—After Morris Graves (p. 56). ONS used as copytext. First published in Evergreen Review 1.2 “The San Francisco Scene” (1957): 55.
Éternuement* (p. 57). Previously unpublished; JSP 2004 ms. used as copytext. One of the poems, previously thought lost along with the “Phases of the Moon,” that were listed in Spicer’s 1958 letter to Don Allen of the poems he thought his best. The letter is printed in the introduction to One Night Stand.
Song for the Great Mother (p. 57). ONS used as copytext. First published in Caterpillar 12 (July 1970): 73.
“Mrs. Doom,” one of the characters of the poem, appears in Spicer’s contemporaneous project “Oliver Charming,” and “Song for the Great Mother” might be considered an outgrowth of this work.
“The city of Boston . . .”* (p. 58). JSP 2004 ms. used as copytext.
Five Words for Joe Dunn on His Twenty-Second Birthday (p. 58). ONS used as copytext. First published in Audience 4.2 (1956): 8–9.
Birdland, California* (p. 60). Previously unpublished; JSP 2004 ms. used as copytext. From the second of five notebooks Spicer used while wri
ting “Oliver Charming.”
The date was in fact October 5 when, in the second game of the 1956 World Series, the Yankees used seven pitchers and still lost to the Dodgers, 8 to 13.
“Imagine Lucifer . . .”* (p. 61). JSP 2004 ms. used as copytext. From the third of five notebooks Spicer used while writing “Oliver Charming.”
The Song of the Bird in the Loins (p. 62). ONS used as copytext. First published in Evergreen Review 1.2 “The San Francisco Scene” (1957): 58. From the last of five notebooks Spicer used while writing “Oliver Charming.”
Babel 3 (p. 63). ONS used as copytext. First published in Adventures in Poetry 12 (Summer 1975): n.p.
They Murdered You: An Elegy on the Death of Kenneth Rexroth* (p. 64). JSP 2004 ms. used as copytext.
This poem, which echoes both Ginsberg’s “Howl” and Rexroth’s “Thou Shalt Not Kill” (his 1953 “Memorial for Dylan Thomas”), was promoted in the Boston Newsletter as “Kenneth Rexroth Eats Worms: An Elegy For Kenneth Rexroth.” In fact, Rexroth lived until 1982.
A Poem to the Reader of the Poem (p. 65). ONS used as copytext, save for retaining the stanza breaks in CB. First published in Caterpillar 12 (July 1970): 77–79.
Song for Bird and Myself (p. 69). ONS used as copytext. First published in Measure 1 (1957). JSP 2004 ms. as “Song for Bird and Myself,” with half-erased subtitle, “A Memorial for his Death and Mine, For Allen Joyce.”
The ms. contains the following lines, which were later excised:
Obscene,
That’s what the wings mean.
My friend in a Turkish bath
Suffering old men to touch him
Bird dying, an old man, in a room across from the Club Bohemia “
That’s where Bird died,”
They used to tell me in New York
As if they were proud
That a city could kill him.
Obscene,
A friend collects pictures of nude athletes I travel
With a suitcase full of dead butterflies.
A Poem Without a Single Bird in It* (p. 73). JSP 2004 ms. used as copytext. First appeared in American Poetry Review 27.1 (January/February 1998).
Spicer sent Robin Blaser this poem from Berkeley enclosed in a letter dated December 13, 1956 (i.e., just after JS returned to the West Coast).
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. (p. 74). Robin Blaser included the first few pages of this text in the “Poems and Documents” section of CB.
The composition of “Oliver Charming” preoccupied Spicer throughout his 1955–1956 sojourn in Boston. Its confusion of sex, race, nonsense, and self-loathing makes the “Oliver Charming” material problematic, but it’s essential to understanding Spicer’s sense of himself in mid-career. Part manifesto, part novel, part poem, part diary, part frame story, “Oliver Charming” is a surrealist blurred-genre document that expands geometrically, swallowing all in its path. “S.,” the ostensible editor of these papers, is observed critically by Charming, their ostensible author, who manages to send up Spicer’s amatory interest in the young poets and artists who began to flock to him at this time. Graham Mackintosh is thinly disguised as “Graham Macarel,” while Carolyn and Joe Dunn appear as “Mrs. and Mr. Doom.” As it grows, the work becomes a gallery of mirrors in which various versions of masculinity appear in distorted reflection, from the New England Brahminism of the editor Thomas Wentworth Higginson (who befriended Emily Dickinson in 1862) to the steel-jawed pulp Angeleno righteousness of Perry Mason, the fictional attorney created by Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) and one of Spicer’s favorite detective heroes.
Spicer’s “Oliver Charming” materials (in JSP 2004) are copious and show evidence of much revision. Following the two holograph manuscripts and a typescript prepared by Blaser from a now lost third holograph, we can trace the general evolution of the text. In Manuscript A, the earliest here, the names “Graham Mackintosh” and “Spicer” are used freely throughout, though Spicer appends a note to say that if the “Diary” is to be published, then the name “Macarel” must be substituted for “Mackintosh.”
Manuscript B considerably revises the manifesto and the earlier part of the diary, then continues to weave its way through the five notebooks Spicer used in Boston, ending in mid-trial when “S.” is asked if he is acquainted with Oliver Charming.
Manuscript C, Blaser’s typescript, shows signs of further revision, and we presume that he worked from an original revised by Spicer and now lost. We have used Blaser’s version as our copytext up to the very first line of the “Diary” entry for January 12, 1954, which dramatically breaks off in mid-sentence. From there on the text in this volume follows Manuscript B as above.
“Poetry as Magic” Workshop Questionnaire (p. 99). Reproduced from original mimeograph (in JSP 2004).
Spicer’s first order of business in the final weeks of 1956 was preparing his “Poetry as Magic” workshop, offered in the spring semester of 1957 under the auspices of San Francisco State College (now University). Robert Duncan, who assisted Ruth Witt-Diamant at the SF State Poetry Center, arranged for Spicer’s workshop to be held off campus, at the main branch of San Francisco’s Public Library, in hopes of attracting poets in all stages of development. “This is not a course in technique or ‘how to write,’” Spicer warned. “It will be a group exploration of the practices of the new magical school of poetry which is best represented in the work of Lorca, Artaud, Charles Olson and Robert Duncan.” Spicer formulated this questionnaire, which Duncan typed onto mimeograph paper and circulated widely as a survey of available talent. The Poetry Center has the “original stencil,” while the Bancroft Library has much other material, including many questionnaires completed by those who made the cut and those whom Spicer rejected. Participants in the workshop eventually included Helen Adam, Ebbe Borregaard, James Broughton, Duncan himself, Joe Dunn, Jack Gilbert, and George Stanley.
AFTER LORCA (p. 105). CB used as copytext, except in “A Diamond,” which restores the first stanza break from the White Rabbit Press (WRP) edition. First published by WRP (San Francisco 1957).
Of the WRP edition, Blaser notes: “Cover design by Jess using facsimile of García Lorca’s signature and drawing of a photograph of Lorca as a child on a toy-horse (reproduced in Guillen’s ‘Prologo’ to Lorca’s Obras Completas [Spain: Aguilar, 1955]: xiv). Jack hoped the drawing would suggest a new Tarot card.” (CB 381)
There are eleven “original” Spicer poems masquerading as Lorca translations; they are: “Ballad of the Seven Passages,” “Frog,” “A Diamond,” “The Ballad of the Dead Woodcutter,” “Alba,” “Aquatic Park,” “Ballad of Sleeping Somewhere Else,” “Buster Keaton Rides Again: A Sequel,” “Friday the 13th,” “Afternoon,” and “Radar.” See Clayton Eshleman’s “The Lorca Working,” in Boundary 2 6.1 (Fall 1977): 31–49.
We offer two other significant texts of interest from the After Lorca notebooks (JSP 2004):
Ballad of the Surrealist’s Daughter
A Translation for W. S. Merwin
Who wants to dance around a Scotch maypole?
Who wants to dance around a Scotch maypole?
When somebody tells us the truth about songbirds
Who wants to dance around a Scotch maypole?
Your pants are very nice and I lick them,
Somebody says your pants are very nice and I lick them,
When children and songbirds come home from their barrooms
Somebody says your pants are very nice and I lick them.
The songbirds are all very nice. Maybe.
The songbirds are all very nice. Maybe.
When somebody tells us the truth about songbirds
Somebody dies with a thump and I lick them.
In the fifth letter to Lorca, Spicer writes: “I, for example, could not finish the last letter I was writing you about sounds.” In the third of seven Lorca notebooks at the Bancroft this
draft appears and is in fact that unfinished letter to Lorca about sound:
A friend asked me the other day if I didn’t think that the printing of a poem helped to complete it, to make it actual when before it was only potential. I answered no, that to me print was irrelevant, that it was merely an inefficient way of recording the sound of the poem and that, if I had my choice, I would publish my poems alone by tape recording.
This has always been the line I have taken, but I wonder now. I could not have translated your poem from a tape recording of your voice. As a matter of fact, having heard your voice, you would become as much a stranger to me as my best friend—the narrow line on which we communicate would be broken.
The sight and the sound of the poem is in the poem. Your voice, my voice, your page, my page, your language, my language—they all get in the way if we let them. They do not matter. Only what we transfer matters, only what we make appear.
It is not merely that the voice, the personal gets in the way of the poem. That is bad enough. But worse, the sounds of the language change year by year and mile by mile from the speaker.
Let me put it this way. If Chaucer had written in Chinese wouldn’t he be more available to us today than he is in Middle English? There could be translation then. We could not confuse his sounds with our sounds.
The advantage of the Chinese ideograph is not, as Fenollosa thought, its visual imitation of the object. Its advantage is merely its lack of sound, the fact that sound could never be reconstructed from it. Its advantage is that it is arbitrary, that one has to listen to it in one’s own language.
But there is another side to the coin. The very visual imitation of objects that Pound and Fenollosa praised is the cause of visual wishywashyness. But the visual is irrelevant. If sound decays, sight becomes cute. The arrangement of the poem on the page [becomes a] finicky insistence on where the line breaks. (Christ, it is because the ideograph once tried to imitate the object that Chinese poetry is weak, has the wishywashyness of flower-arrangement.) Sight is worse than sound because it is less alien. Close your eyes and the words will have to struggle to reach you. You will not confuse them with their objects.