by Jack Spicer
ADMONITIONS (p. 155). CB used as copytext, except: hyphen added to the word “re-echo” in “Dear Robin,” as in Adventures in Poetry (AIP) edition. First published in book form by AIP (New York 1974).
A BOOK OF MUSIC (p. 169). CB used as copytext. First published by WRP (San Francisco 1969).
Socrates* (p. 179). Previously unpublished; JSP 2004 ms. used as copytext.
A Poem for Dada Day at The Place, April 1, 1958* (p. 180). JSP 2004 ms. used as copytext.
BILLY THE KID (p. 183). CB used as copytext. First published by Enkidu Surrogate (Stinson Beach, CA 1959). This first edition was designed and illustrated by Jess.
For Steve Jonas Who Is in Jail for Defrauding a Book Club* (p. 192). JSP 2004 ms. used as copytext.
FIFTEEN FALSE PROPOSITIONS AGAINST GOD (p. 193). CB used as copytext. First published in Beatitude 3 (May 1959). Also published as Fifteen False Propositions About [sic] God (San Francisco: ManRoot Press, 1974).
Variant in poem XI, l. 12 in ManRoot edition: “How love can exist without any flavor to it.”
LETTERS TO JAMES ALEXANDER* (p. 203). JSP 71 ms. used as copytext. These letters first appeared in altered form in Caterpillar 12 (1970): 162–174.
James Alexander, the younger brother of the Black Mountain/San Francisco painter Paul Alexander, was a young poet Spicer met in San Francisco in the fall of 1958. Later that winter, Alexander returned home to his parents in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Spicer, attracted to both the youth and his poetry, began writing him letters and poems to continue their connection. The letters were written in 1959 as Spicer was beginning to work on The Heads of the Town Up to the Aether; the second section, “A Fake Novel about the Life of Arthur Rimbaud,” begins in a dead letter office. Spicer believed that letters could be poems, and he read them aloud to the poets at the Sunday gatherings in North Beach. Alexander’s serial poem entitled The Jack Rabbit Poem, though written at this time, was published after Spicer’s death by WRP in 1966.
“Sun Dance” is a poem by James Alexander.
APOLLO SENDS SEVEN NURSERY RHYMES TO JAMES ALEXANDER (p. 217). CB used as copytext, except Blaser’s title has been slightly changed (from “Nursury” to “Nursery”) to reflect the manuscripts in JSP 2004.
A BIRTHDAY POEM FOR JIM (AND JAMES) ALEXANDER* (p. 223). JSP 2004 ms used as copytext.
The Italian text is from Michelangelo Buonarroti. He is replying to the poet Giovanni de Carlo Strozzi, who was commenting on his statue in the Medici Chapel. Strozzi said to Michelangelo that his statues were so beautiful that they could come to life (literally, they could “awake”). But Michelangelo, deeply saddened by the crumbling of the Republic of Florence, replied with these words (translated by Jennifer Scappettone):
Dear is sleep to me, and stone’s being even more,
so long as damage and indignity endure;
not to see, not to hear, is happy fortune;
so do not stir me, for mercy’s sake, speak low.
The last poem in this series first appeared as “Epilogue for Jim” in J 2 (1959).
Imaginary Elegies (V, VI) (p. 230). ONS used as copytext. First appeared in J 5 (1959). See earlier note for elegies I to III.
“Dignity is a part of a man . . .”* (p. 233). Previously unpublished; JSP 2004 ms. used as copytext.
HELEN: A REVISION* (p. 235). Previously unpublished; JSP 2004 ms. used as copytext.
The notebook in which Spicer wrote “A Textbook of Poetry” bears the title “Helen: A Revision” on its cover. We found the Helen poem itself in a different notebook, written on successive recto notebook pages and then, at the end of the notebook, doubling back to fill the previously blank verso pages. This pattern of writing from recto to verso has precedents; an earlier poem, “Birdland, California,” for example, was written in much the same way. The title “Helen: A Revision” appears not only on the cover of the “Textbook” notebook but at the top of the page of the second poem in the present series, the words “of Euripides” crossed out afterward. Spicer’s Helen poem, raw and energetic, was written as his friend Robert Duncan was working on what we now call his “H.D. Book,” for which he solicited Spicer’s input. Spicer’s “Revision” might be imagined equally as a tribute to Duncan’s and H.D.’s work on Helen, and as a riposte or “correction” to their romantic visions.
THE HEADS OF THE TOWN UP TO THE AETHER (p. 247). CB used as copytext with the exception of a typo corrected in “Dillinger.” Book One, “Homage to Creeley,” was privately printed in a mimeo edition by Harold and Dora Dull in Annapolis, California, in the summer of 1959 (without the “Explanatory Notes”). The finished book (with all three sections) was first printed by the Auerhahn Society in San Francisco in 1962.
In his note on this text, Blaser writes: “There is no Chapter VIII in Book I of ‘A Fake Novel About the Life of Arthur Rimbaud.’”
There is a significant variant in “A Fake Novel About the Life of Arthur Rimbaud, Book III, Chapter I,” stanza 3, line 1. In the Auerhahn edition this line reads: “If they call him up into being by their logic he does exist.”
LAMENT FOR THE MAKERS (p. 315). CB used as copytext. First published by WRP (Oakland 1962). In this edition, Spicer wickedly replicates the acknowledgments page from Robert Duncan’s book The Opening of the Field (New York: Grove, 1960). The cover features a collage by Graham Mackintosh.
Blaser offers this note in CB: “This is the original version. ‘Dover Beach’ is very different from the printed version [White Rabbit, 1962]. Jack regretted the politeness of the printed version and rejected it as a book.[ . . . ] The ‘Postscript’ is a quotation: Louis Untermeyer’s story in E. Nehls, ed., D. H. Lawrence: A Composite Biography 3: (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959): 484–485.”
A RED WHEELBARROW (p. 323). CB used as copytext. First published by Arif Press (Berkeley 1971).
Three Marxist Essays (p. 328). ONS used as copytext. First appeared in N—San Francisco Capitalist Bloodsucker (Spring 1962).
THE HOLY GRAIL (p. 329). CB used as copytext. First published by WRP (San Francisco 1964).
The German text in second poem of the Book of Merlin comes from the protest song “The Peat Bog Soldiers.”
GOLEM* (p. 359). First published as Golem by Granary Books (New York 1999). Here used as copytext.
The first poem in Golem had been widely circulated, since Lew Ellingham copied it down on a brown paper bag at Gino & Carlo’s bar when Spicer left the room. “October 1, 1962,” which Spicer’s intimates referred to as the “fix” poem, appeared in print in ManRoot No. 10 and in One Night Stand. Spicer’s friend Jim Herndon, to whom Spicer entrusted the manuscript, was the only one who knew that it was not a discrete poem but the first passage in a projected serial poem. Years later, after Herndon’s death, his former wife Fran Herndon was cleaning her basement and started going through an old file cabinet in which she believed Jim had kept income tax forms. One drawer was filled with curiosities, including the manuscript to The Holy Grail, which Fran had typed for Spicer, a handful of other previously known Spicer poems, and the six poems of Golem in manuscript. Illustrated with Fran Herndon’s sports collages, composed during the same time as the poems in Golem, the piece was published in 1999, with an afterword by Kevin Killian. (JSP 99)
MAP POEMS* (p.365). JSP 2004 ms. used as copytext. Published as Map Poems (Berkeley: Bancroft Library Press, 2005), with an introduction by Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian.
Collating Spicer’s papers in 2004 we stumbled across five unpublished poems with atypical, three-digit titles, and put them aside for further investigation. In another box, days later, we found a sheaf of facsimiles of pages from a California roadmap. If their page numbers hadn’t been so absurdly prominent, we might never have reunited them with the corresponding poems. This sequence comes from early 1964 (around the same time as the Valentine’s Contest of Open Space). The title is ours.
LANGUAGE (p. 371). CB used as copytext, except in “Intermission I”: “harms” changed to “harmes” to reflec
t Donne’s original spelling, as in WRP edition. First published by WRP (San Francisco 1965).
The cover design is a facsimile of the cover of Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America 28.3, part 1 (July–September 1952). The issue included Spicer’s one academic article in linguistics, co-authored by David W. Reed and John L. Spicer, entitled “Correlation Methods of Comparing Idiolects in a Transition Area,” which appeared on pages 348–359. The WRP cover features the title, author, and press information written over the journal’s cover in red crayon (or lipstick) by Spicer.
Variants in WRP: in “Morphemics 4,” ll. 5–6: “The beasts would build a whole new / the woods with the faun)” appears to be an omission corrected in CB. And in “Phonemics 3,” l. 1: “(distance sound)” appears to be corrected as “(distant sound)” in CB. (JSF 20)
BOOK OF MAGAZINE VERSE (p. 403). CB used as copytext. First published by WRP (San Francisco 1966). The cover design by Graham Mackintosh and Stan Persky simulated an early issue of Poetry magazine. The paper for each section of the book was chosen to simulate that of the magazine to which the poems were directed. The original edition carried this acknowledgment note:
None of the poems in this book have been published in magazines. The author wishes to acknowledge the rejection of poems herein by editors Denise Levertov of The Nation and Henry Rago of Poetry (Chicago).
Blaser notes in CB: “Poem 1 of ‘Two Poems for The Nation’ and poem 2 of ‘Six Poems for Poetry Chicago’ are the same. This curious duplication seems to have been an instance of word for word dictation of the same poem some days apart. Jack did not know he had duplicated a poem until he read the poem to Stan Persky and me and we pointed it out. He looked surprised, checked them, and said that was the way they had to stand” (CB 380). (JSF 20)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Spicer’s Books
After Lorca (San Francisco: White Rabbit Press, 1957). Cover by Jess.
Homage to Creeley (Annapolis, CA: privately printed by Harold and Dora Dull, 1959).
Billy The Kid (Stinson Beach, CA: Enkidu Surrogate, 1959). Cover and illus. by Jess.
The Heads of the Town Up to the Aether (San Francisco: The Auerhahn Society, 1962). With lithographs by Fran Herndon.
Lament for the Makers (Oakland: White Rabbit Press, 1962). Cover collage by Graham Mackintosh.
The Holy Grail (San Francisco: White Rabbit Press, 1964). With decorative lettering by Graham Mackintosh.
[With Lawrence Ferlinghetti] Dear Jack: The Spicer/Ferlinghetti Correspondence (San Francisco: White Rabbit Press, 1964).
Language (San Francisco: White Rabbit Press, 1965).
Selected Posthumous Publications of Spicer’s Work
Book of Magazine Verse (San Francisco: White Rabbit Press, 1966). Design by Graham Mackintosh and Stan Persky.
A Book of Music (San Francisco: White Rabbit Press, 1969). Illus. by Graham Mackintosh.
The [sic] Red Wheelbarrow (Berkeley: Arif, 1971).
Admonitions (New York: Adventures in Poetry, 1974).
[With Robert Duncan] An Ode and Arcadia (Berkeley: Ark Press, 1974). With an introduction by F. J. Cebulski.
Fifteen False Propositions About [sic] God (San Francisco: ManRoot Books, 1974).
The Collected Books of Jack Spicer, edited and with an afterword by Robin Blaser (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1975).
One Night Stand & Other Poems, ed. Donald Allen (San Francisco: Grey Fox Press, 1980). With an introduction by Robert Duncan.
Collected Poems, 1945–1946 (Berkeley: Oyez/White Rabbit Press, 1981).
The Tower of Babel: Jack Spicer’s Detective Novel, eds. Lewis Ellingham and Kevin Killian (Hoboken, NJ: Talisman House, 1994).
The House That Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer, edited and with an afterword by Peter Gizzi (Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1998).
Golem (New York: Granary Books, 1999). With color collages by Fran Herndon and an afterword by Kevin Killian.
Map Poems (Berkeley: Bancroft Library, 2005). With facsimiles of California roadmaps and an introduction by Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian.
About Spicer’s Life
Jack Spicer, by Edward Halsey Foster (Boise, Idaho: Boise State University, 1991).
Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the Berkeley Renaissance, by Lewis Ellingham and Kevin Killian (Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1998).
INDEX OF TITLES
IInd Phase of the Moon 53
IIIrd Phase of the Moon 53
IVth Phase of the Moon 54
A Birthday Poem for Jim (and James) Alexander 223
A Book of Music 169
A Book of Music 178
A Diamond 119
A Fake Novel about the Life of Arthur Rimbaud 281
A Girl’s Song 5
A Lecture in Practical Aesthetics 14
A Night in Four Parts (Second Version) 16
A Poe-/m Ronnie Wrote The Other Evening 262
A Poem for Dada Day at The Place, April 1, 1955 46
A Poem for Dada Day at The Place, April 1, 1958 180
A Poem to the Reader of the Poem 65
A Poem Without a Single Bird in It 73
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Landscape 6
A Postscript for Charles Olson 168
A Postscript to the Berkeley Renaissance 45
A Red Wheelbarrow 323
A Red Wheelbarrow 325
A Second Train Song for Gary 41
A Textbook of Poetry 299
A Valentine 171
Admonitions 155
After Lorca 105
Afternoon 152
Alba 125
An Answer to Jaime de Angulo 13
An Apocalypse for Three Voices 10
“Any fool can get into an ocean . . .” 23
Apollo Sends Seven Nursery Rhymes to James Alexander 217
Aquatic Park 131
Army Beach With Trumpets 176
Awkward Bridge 261
Babel 3 63
Bacchus 119
Ballad of Sleeping Somewhere Else 137
Ballad of the Dead Boy 140
Ballad of the Little Girl Who Invented the Universe 109
Ballad of the Seven Passages 111
Ballad of the Shadowy Pigeons 117
Ballad of the Terrible Presence 136
Baseball Predictions, April 1, 1964 375
Berkeley in Time of Plague 5
Billy the Kid 183
Birdland, California 60
Blood 280
Book of Magazine Verse 403
Booth Tarkington 266
Buster Keaton Rides Again: A Sequel 142
Buster Keaton’s Ride 113
Cantata 172
Car Song 251
Coda 270
Concord Hymn 252
Conspiracy 177
Crabs 279
Dash 278
Dear Joe, 157
Dear Lorca, (These letters are to be . . .) 110
Dear Lorca, (When I translate . . .) 122
Dear Lorca, (I would like to make . . .) 133
Dear Lorca, (When you had finished . . .) 138
Dear Lorca, (Loneliness is necessary . . .) 150
Dear Lorca, (This is the last . . .) 153
Dear Robin, 163
Debussy 112
Dialogue Between Intellect and Passion 15
“Dignity is a part of a man . . .” 233
Dillinger 277
Dover Beach 317
Drugs 271
Duet for a Chair and a Table 176
Elegy 259
Éternuement 57
Ferlinghetti 265
Fifteen False Propositions Against God 193
Five Words for Joe Dunn on His Twenty-second Birthday 58
For Billy 162
For Dick 161
For Ebbe 158
For Ed 159
For Hal 167
For Harvey 160
For Jack 166
For J
erry 167
For Joe 164
For Judson 165
For Mac 160
For Nemmie 158
For Robert 165
For Russ 159
For Steve Jonas Who Is in Jail for Defrauding a Book Club 192
For Willie 166
Forest 132
Fort Wayne 272
Four Poems for Ramparts 411
Four Poems for The St. Louis Sporting News 414
Friday, the 13th 147
Frog 113
Ghost Song 175
Golem 359
Good Friday: For Lack of an Orchestra 174
Graphemics 397
He Died at Sunrise 135
Helen: A Revision 235
Helen: A Revision 237
Hibernation—After Morris Graves 56
Hisperica Famina 269
Homage to Creeley/Explanatory Notes 249
Homosexuality 6
Imaginary Elegies (I) 26
Imaginary Elegies (II) 27
Imaginary Elegies (III) 29
Imaginary Elegies (IV) 48
Imaginary Elegies (V) 230
Imaginary Elegies (VI) 231
“Imagine Lucifer . . .” 61
Improvisations on a Sentence by Poe 171
Intermission I 387
Intermission II 388
Intermission III 388
Intermissions 387
Introduction 107
It Is Forbidden to Look 276
Juan Ramón Jimenez 109
Jungle Warfare 173
Lament for the Makers 315
Lament for the Makers 322
Language 371
Letters to James Alexander 203
Love 325
Love 8 327