My Vocabulary Did This to Me
Page 30
Love II 325
Love III 326
Love IV 326
Love Poems 382
Love V 326
Love VI 327
Love VII 327
Magic 264
Map Poems 365
[Map Poems] 111 367
[Map Poems] 137 367
[Map Poems] 155 368
[Map Poems] 185 368
[Map Poems] 217 369
Minneapolis: Indian Summer 37
Morphemics 391
Mummer 174
Narcissus (“Poor Narcissus”) 134
Narcissus (“Child,”) 139
Ode for Walt Whitman 126
On Reading Last Year’s Love Poems 39
One Night Stand 13
Orfeo 172
Orpheus After Eurydice 19
Orpheus in Athens 39
Orpheus in Hell 18
Orpheus’ Song to Apollo 20
Partington Ridge 268
Phonemics 393
Portrait of an Artist 38
Postscript 322
Prayer for My Daughter 274
Psychoanalysis: An Elegy 31
Radar 154
Seven Poems for the Vancouver Festival 417
Several Years’ Love 250
Sheep Trails Are Fateful to Strangers 257
Six Poems For Poetry Chicago 406
Socrates 179
Some Notes on Whitman for Allen Joyce 55
Song for Bird and Myself 69
Song for September 141
Song for the Great Mother 57
Song of a Prisoner 173
Song of the Poor 125
Song of Two Windows 148
Sonnet for the Beginning of Winter 38
Sporting Life 373
Suicide 118
Surrealism 273
Ten Poems for Downbeat 421
The Ballad of Escape 146
The Ballad of the Dead Woodcutter 123
The Ballad of Weeping 124
The Birds 320
The Birth of Venus 321
The Book of Galahad 350
The Book of Gawain 331
The Book of Gwenivere 342
The Book of Lancelot 339
The Book of Merlin 346
The Book of Percival 335
The Book of the Death of Arthur 355
The Cardplayers 175
“The city of Boston . . .” 58
The Dancing Ape 25
The Day Five Thousand Fish Died Along the Charles River 56
The Heads of the Town Up to the Aether 247
The Holy Grail 329
The Little Halfwit 120
The Man in the Wall 275
The Moon and Lady Death 151
The Scrollwork on the Casket 24
The Song of the Bird in the Loins 62
The Territory Is Not the Map 254
The Tragic Muse 267
The Unvert Manifesto and Other Papers Found in the Rare Book Room of the Boston Public Library . . . 74
“The window is a sword . . .” 47
“They are selling the midnight papers . . .” 22
They Came to the Briers and the Briers Couldn’t Find ’Em 255
They Murdered You: An Elegy on the Death of Kenneth Rexroth 64
Thing Language 373
Three Marxist Essays 328
Three Poems for Tish 409
To Be Inscribed on a Painting 258
Train Song for Gary 40
Transformations 389
Transformations I 389
Transformations II 390
Transformations III 390
Troy Poem 21
Two Poems for The Nation 405
Venus 147
Verlaine 121
Watching a TV Boxing Match in October 37
“We find the body difficult to speak . . .” 22
When You Go Away You Don’t Come Home 256
Who Knew 263
Wrong Turn 253
INDEX OF FIRST LINES
A bridge to what, you ask. There is not a bridge on the map. Is this all not composed of sand-dunes. 368
A dead starfish on a beach 160
A diamond 119
A green boat 131
A kind of numbness fills your heart and mine, 38
A moment’s rest. I can’t get a moment’s rest without sleeping 408
A penny for a drink for the old guy 320
A pope almost dying of hiccups. Or St. Peter 412
A song 121
A swallow whispers in my loins 62
A violin which is following me 177
A white rabbit absolutely outlined in whiteness upon a black background 268
Along East River and the Bronx 126
Always a river at your back. Dead coalminers. 368
An untouched green murmur. 119
An unvert is neither an invert or an outvert, a pervert or a convert, 74
And when the fish come in to die 56
And you alone in Federal prison saying 192
Another wrong turning 230
Any fool can get into an ocean 23
At least we both know how shitty the world is. 426
At ten o’clock in the morning 118
At the base of the throat is a little machine 147
Away we go with no moon at all 251
Ay qué trabajo me cuesta 125
Backyards and barnlots 350
Baudelaire country. Heat. Hills without gold. 367
Be bop de beep 265
Because the figtree was sapless 123
Because they accused me of poems 179
Bewildered 159
Child, 139
Christ, 159
Coming at an end, the lovers 178
Damn them, 278
Dante would have blamed Beatrice 257
Darling, 46
Daughters of memory 279
Deeper than sleep, but in a room as narrow 56
Dignity 231
Dignity is a part of a man being naked before 233
Do the flowers change as I touch your skin? 382
El guardarropa, novedad, dispersar. 165
Enclosed you find the first of the publications of White Rabbit Press. 163
Entering the room 14
Every afternoon in Granada 140
Every street has alleys and within the alleys 22
Everything destroyed must be thrown away 321
Fool- 335
Fort Wayne, Indiana, is the capital of Nitrogen. All streets end there. 205
Frankly I was quite surprised when Mr. Spicer asked me to write. 107
Get those words out of your mouth and into your heart. 411
Ghosts drip 263
Giving the message like a seagull sc-waking about a dead piece 419
“Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect 346
God is a big white baseball that has nothing to do but go in a curve or a straight line. 416
God must have a big eye to see everything 27
God’s other eye is good and gold. So bright 29
He was reaching for a world I can still remember. 55
“He who sells what isn’t hisn 355
Hoot! The piercing screams of ghosts vanish on the horizon 327
I am dissatisfied with my poetry. 69
I can’t stand to see them shimmering in the impossible music of 423
I couldn’t get my feeling loose 276
I dreamt the ocean died, gave up its dead. 10
I have become lost many times along the ocean 146
I have closed my window 124
“I have found it,” he said, as he slipped on the soap in his bathtub. 369
I said, “Afternoon” 120
I saw a headless she-mule 174
I shall give you five words for your birthday. 58
I throw a naked eagle in your throat. 65
I want the river lost from its bed 136
I will never again climb a mountain, re
ad St. Augustine or go to bed with a woman 64
I would like to beat my hands around your heart. 414
I would like to make poems out of real objects. 132
If asked whether I am goyim, 13
If nothing happens it is possible 168
If your hand had been meaningless 125
Imagine Lucifer 61
“In Scarlet Town where I was born 390
In the distant night the children are singing: 141
In the far, fat Vietnamese jungles nothing grows. 407
In the poisonous candy factory 167
In the red dawn of the Apocalypse (St. John’s not the Defense 412
In the white endlessness 109
“Indefiniteness is an element of the true music.” 171
Innocence is a drug to be protected against strangers 161
It is a story for chil 225
It then becomes a matter of not 420
It was not desire but your shivering moved me. 409
It wasn’t the tower at all 63
It’s going to be around here for a hundred years or so. The surf, 424
Jack 262
Jasmine flower and a bull with his throat slashed. 109
Joan of Arc 269
Lance, lets figure out where we stand 342
Like a scared rabbit running over and over again his tracks in the snow 397
Like all the novels I’ve read 113
“Limon tree very pretty 406
Listen, you silk-hearted bastard, 13
Little men from outer space and creatures who eat frogs. 367
Loneliness is necessary for pure poetry. 149
Love ate the red wheelbarrow. 327
Love isn’t proud enough to hate 261
Love isn’t proud enough to hate 270
Mechanicly we move 413
Morphemes in section 391
My shadow moves silently 112
National League American League 375
Never looking him in the eye once. All mythology 326
Night of four moons 135
No 266
No call upon anyone but the timber drifting in the waves 322
No love deserves the death it has. An archipelago 393
No one exactly knows 154
Nothing but the last sun falling in the last oily water by the 418
Nothing in my body escapes me. 173
Nothing in the rock hears nothing 327
Nothing is known about Helen but her voice 237
Oh there are waves where the heart beats fully 158
On the branches of laurel 117
On the mere physical level 256
One minute after midnight, Mrs. Doom 57
Orpheus 275
Our father that art in heaven 274
Ovid among the Thracians soon received 38
“Passion is alien to intellect 15
People who don’t like the smell of faggot vomit 164
Pieces of the past arising out of the rubble. Which evokes Eliot 405
Pieces of the past arising out of the rubble. Which evokes Eliot 406
Pitchers are obviously not human. They have the ghosts of 415
Plague took us and the land from under us, 5
Poetry, almost blind like a camera 26
Poor Narcissus 134
Rather than our bodies the sand 176
Redrock Canyon the place between two limits 421
Rest and look at this goddamned wheelbarrow. Whatever 325
Ridiculous 172
Rimbaud is spelled with seven letters of the alphabet 111
Rooster: Cockledoodledoo! 113
Roses that wear roses 6
Sharp as an arrow Orpheus 172
She isn’t real 267
Some time ago I would have thought that writing notes on particular poems would either be a confession 157
Son of Pan with thighs smooth as raw silk, 53
Song changes and his unburnt hair 5
Start with a baseball diamond high 417
Stay there on the edge of no cliff. With no conceivable future 388
Strange, I had words for dinner 264
Surrealism is the business of poets who cannot benefit by surrealism. 299
Tabula rasa 317
Tell everyone to have guts 166
Tender as an eagle it swoops down 325
That old equalizer 162
The bartender 180
The Beatles, devoid of form and color, but full of images play 419
The bell went “rrrrr” 271
The boxers show an equilibrium 37
The boy had never seen an honest man. 39
The city of Boston is filled with frogheaded flies and British policemen. 58
The dancing ape is whirling round the beds 25
The dead girl 147
“The dog wagged his tail and looked wonderfly sad” Poets in 421
The fate of the car 258
The Frazier River was discovered by mistake it being thought 417
The goop 255
The heart’s a sprinting thing and hammers fast. 39
The human voices put the angels 277
The in 175
The jokes 280
The messages come through at last: 272
The moment’s rest. And the bodies entangled and yet not 408
The moon has marble teeth 151
The moon is tied to a few strings 175
“The movement of the earth brings harmes and fears. 387
The pine needles fall 137
The poem begins to mirror itself. 423
The poet 165
The radio that told me about the death of Billy The Kid 185
The rind (also called the skin) of the lemon is difficult to understand 407
The self is no longer real 195
The sky asks afternoon for a word. 152
The sound of words as they fall away from our mouths 176
The stairs upstairs were stairs 60
The town wasn’t much 173
The trains move quietly upon 40
The trouble with comparing a poet with a radio is that radios 373
The window is a sword. In the wet air the glass rain falls. 47
The Wizards of Oz have all gone kook 388
The word is imitative 174
“Then Frieda told us an incredible story. 322
Then I, a singer and hunter, fished 19
There are no holds on the stone. It looks 326
There is a beautiful world in a little girl’s body. 57
There is a mind beating in that pile of rubble you call your 409
There is no excuse for bad ghosts 166
There should be no rules for this but it should be simultaneous if at all. 328
These big trucks drive and in each one 405
These letters are to be as temporary as our poetry is to be permanent. 110
They say “he need (present) enemy (plural)” 389
They’ve (the leaders of our country) have become involved in a 425
This is an ode to Horace Stoneham and Walter O’Malley. 361
This is the last letter. 153
This is the melancholy Dane 390
This ocean, humiliating in its disguises 373
To begin with, I could have slept with all of the people in the poems. 249
To walk down the streets with a dead man or to hold conversation 24
Tony 331
Tony (another Tony) 339
“Trotskyite bandits from the hills,” Churchill called ’em long 425
Two loves I had. One rang a bell 250
Useless Valentines 171
Waiting like a trap-door spider for a rookie sell-out. Baseball or 414
Watch sunset fall upon that beach like others did. The waves 6
We find the body difficult to speak, 22
We, 21
Well Dennis you don’t have to hear any 422
What are you thinking about? 31
What can I say
to you, darling, 73
What did the Indians do 37
What have I lost? When shall I start to sing 45
What I knew 253
What is a half-truth the lobster declared 254
Whatever belongs in the circle is in the circle 273
When he first brought his music into hell 18
When I translate one of your poems and I come across words I do not understand, 122
When the trains come into strange cities 41
When they number their blocks they mean business. 158
When you break a line nothing 160
When you had finished a poem what did it want you to do with it? 138
While the heart twists 16
Whispers— 259
Who pays attention to the music the stone makes 326
Wind, window, moon 148
Wit is the only barrier between ourselves and them. 418
“With two yoke of oxen and one yellow dog, with one 422
Yes, be like God. I wonder what I thought 48
You are almost as old as the youngest of us were. 54
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. 410
“You can’t close the door. It is in the future,” 281
You have clipped his wings. The marble 325
You have not listened to a word I have sung 219
You stand on a small hill overlooking a valley we were not able to visit. 53
You want me to tell you 132
You, Apollo, have yoked your horse 20
Your joke 252
Youth 167
ZEUS. It is to be assumed that I do not exist while most people in the vision assume that I do exist. 237
ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND EDITORS
Jack Spicer was born in Los Angeles in 1925. He moved north to attend the University of California, Berkeley, where he became friends with Robin Blaser and Robert Duncan, among other poets, artists, and scholars who were part of the San Francisco scene. He died in 1965. During his short but prolific life, he published many books of poems through small presses, including After Lorca (1957), Billy the Kid (1958), and The Holy Grail (1962).
Peter Gizzi is a poet whose recent books include The Outernationale (2007) and Some Values of Landscape and Weather (2003); he is also the editor of The House That Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer (1998), all published by Wesleyan. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Kevin Killian is a poet, novelist, critic, and playwright. He is the co-author of Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance (Wesleyan University Press, 1998), and the author of a book of poetry, Argento Series (2001), two novels, Shy (1989) and Arctic Summer (1997), a book of memoirs, Bedrooms Have Windows (1989), and two books of stories, Little Men (1996) and I Cry Like a Baby (2001).