Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page i my vocabulary did this to me Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me wesleyan poetry page ii Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page iii my vocabulary did this to me The Collected Poetry of JACK SPICER Edited by Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian Wesleyan University Press Middletown, Connecticut Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page iv 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 Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review Members of educational institutions and organizations wishing to photocopy any of the work for classroom use, or authors and publishers who would like to obtain permission for any of the material in the work, should contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Lebanon, NH 03766 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 978– 0-8195– 6887– (cloth : alk paper) I Gizzi, Peter II Killian, Kevin III Title 3569.479 2008 811'.54—dc22 2008024997 F : Jack Spicer at the Gallery opening in San Francisco, 1954 Photo © Robert Berg This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page v CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction About This Edition ix xiii xxvii 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 5 6 10 13 13 14 15 16 18 19 20 21 22 22 23 24 25 26 31 Contents v Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page vi 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 37 37 38 38 39 39 40 41 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) 45 46 47 48 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 They Murdered You: An Elegy on the Death of Kenneth Rexroth vi Contents 53 53 54 55 56 56 57 57 58 58 60 61 62 63 64 Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page vii 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 65 69 73 74 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 Contents 99 105 155 169 179 180 183 192 193 203 217 223 230 233 235 247 315 323 328 329 359 vii Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me MAP POEMS LANGUAGE BOOK OF MAGAZINE VERSE Chronology Notes to the Poems Bibliography Index of Titles Index of First Lines viii Contents page viii 365 371 403 429 437 455 457 461 Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page ix 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 ix Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 453 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 of ‘Two Poems for The Nation’ and poem 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) Notes to the Poems 453 This page intentionally left blank Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 455 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) Bibliography 455 Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 456 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) 456 Bibliography Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 457 INDEX OF TITLES IInd Phase of the Moon IIIrd Phase of the Moon IVth Phase of the Moon 53 53 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 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 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 Bacchus Ballad of Sleeping Somewhere Else Ballad of the Dead Boy Ballad of the Little Girl Who Invented the Universe Ballad of the Seven Passages Ballad of the Shadowy Pigeons Ballad of the Terrible Presence Baseball Predictions, April 1, 1964 Berkeley in Time of Plague Billy the Kid Birdland, California Blood Book of Magazine Verse Booth Tarkington Buster Keaton Rides Again: A Sequel Buster Keaton’s Ride 63 119 137 140 109 111 117 136 375 183 60 280 403 266 142 113 Cantata Car Song Coda Concord Hymn Conspiracy Crabs 172 251 270 252 177 279 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 Index of Titles 457 Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 458 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 Good Friday: For Lack of an Orchestra 174 Graphemics 397 He Died at Sunrise Helen: A Revision Helen: A Revision Hibernation—After Morris Graves Hisperica Famina Homage to Creeley/Explanatory Notes Homosexuality 135 235 237 56 269 249 Elegy Éternuement Imaginary Elegies (I) Imaginary Elegies (II) Imaginary Elegies (III) Imaginary Elegies (IV) Imaginary Elegies (V) Imaginary Elegies (VI) “Imagine Lucifer ” Improvisations on a Sentence by Poe Intermission I Intermission II Intermission III Intermissions Introduction It Is Forbidden to Look 26 27 29 48 230 231 61 171 387 388 388 387 107 276 Juan Ramón Jimenez Jungle Warfare 109 173 Lament for the Makers Lament for the Makers Language Letters to James Alexander Love Love Love II Love III Love IV Love Poems Love V Love VI Love VII 315 322 371 203 325 327 325 326 326 382 326 327 327 Magic Map Poems 264 365 259 57 Ferlinghetti 265 Fifteen False Propositions Against God 193 Five Words for Joe Dunn on His Twentysecond Birthday 58 For Billy 162 For Dick 161 For Ebbe 158 For Ed 159 For Hal 167 For Harvey 160 For Jack 166 For Jerry 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 Golem 458 Index of Titles 175 359 Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 459 [Map Poems] 111 [Map Poems] 137 [Map Poems] 155 [Map Poems] 185 [Map Poems] 217 Minneapolis: Indian Summer Morphemics Mummer 367 367 368 368 369 37 391 174 Narcissus (“Poor Narcissus”) Narcissus (“Child,”) 134 139 Ode for Walt Whitman On Reading Last Year’s Love Poems One Night Stand Orfeo Orpheus After Eurydice Orpheus in Athens Orpheus in Hell Orpheus’ Song to Apollo 126 39 13 172 19 39 18 20 Partington Ridge Phonemics Portrait of an Artist Postscript Prayer for My Daughter Psychoanalysis: An Elegy 268 393 38 322 274 31 Radar 154 Seven Poems for the Vancouver Festival Several Years’ Love Sheep Trails Are Fateful to Strangers Six Poems For Poetry Chicago Socrates Some Notes on Whitman for Allen Joyce Song for Bird and Myself Song for September Song for the Great Mother Song of a Prisoner Song of the Poor Song of Two Windows Sonnet for the Beginning of Winter Sporting Life 417 250 257 406 179 55 69 141 57 173 125 148 38 373 Suicide Surrealism 118 273 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 Index of Titles 459 Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 460 Transformations I Transformations II Transformations III Troy Poem Two Poems for The Nation 389 390 390 21 405 Venus Verlaine 147 121 460 Index of Titles 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 Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 461 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 Because the figtree was sapless Because they accused me of poems Bewildered 265 123 179 159 Child, Christ, Coming at an end, the lovers 139 159 178 Damn them, Dante would have blamed Beatrice Darling, Daughters of memory Deeper than sleep, but in a room as narrow Dignity Dignity is a part of a man being naked before Do the flowers change as I touch your skin? 278 257 46 279 El guardarropa, novedad, dispersar Enclosed you find the first of the publications of White Rabbit Press Entering the room Every afternoon in Granada Every street has alleys and within the alleys Everything destroyed must be thrown away 165 56 231 233 382 163 14 140 22 321 Fool335 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 Index of First Lines 411 461 Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me Ghosts drip Giving the message like a seagull scwaking about a dead piece “Go to jail Go directly to jail Do not pass Go Do not collect God is a big white baseball that has nothing to but go in a curve or a straight line God must have a big eye to see everything God’s other eye is good and gold So bright He was reaching for a world I can still remember “He who sells what isn’t hisn Hoot! The piercing screams of ghosts vanish on the horizon page 462 263 419 346 416 27 29 55 355 327 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, read 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 168 462 Index of First Lines If your hand had been meaningless Imagine Lucifer “In Scarlet Town where I was born In the distant night the children are singing: In the far, fat Vietnamese jungles nothing grows In the poisonous candy factory In the red dawn of the Apocalypse (St John’s not the Defense In the white endlessness “Indefiniteness is an element of the true music.” Innocence is a drug to be protected against strangers It is a story for chil It then becomes a matter of not It was not desire but your shivering moved me It wasn’t the tower at all It’s going to be around here for a hundred years or so The surf, Jack Jasmine flower and a bull with his throat slashed Joan of Arc Lance, lets figure out where we stand Like a scared rabbit running over and over again his tracks in the snow Like all the novels I’ve read “Limon tree very pretty Listen, you silk-hearted bastard, Little men from outer space and creatures who eat frogs Loneliness is necessary for pure poetry Love ate the red wheelbarrow Love isn’t proud enough to hate Love isn’t proud enough to hate Mechanicly we move Morphemes in section My shadow moves silently 125 61 390 141 407 167 412 109 171 161 225 420 409 63 424 262 109 269 342 397 113 406 13 367 149 327 261 270 413 391 112 Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 463 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 On the branches of laurel On the mere physical level One minute after midnight, Mrs Doom Orpheus Our father that art in heaven Ovid among the Thracians soon received 158 117 256 57 275 274 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, 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 Ridiculous Rimbaud is spelled with seven letters of the alphabet Rooster: Cockledoodledoo! Roses that wear roses Sharp as an arrow Orpheus She isn’t real Some time ago I would have thought that writing notes on particular poems would either be a confession Son of Pan with thighs smooth as raw silk, Song changes and his unburnt hair Start with a baseball diamond high Stay there on the edge of no cliff With no conceivable future Strange, I had words for dinner Surrealism is the business of poets who cannot benefit by surrealism 325 172 111 113 172 267 157 53 417 388 264 299 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 Index of First Lines 463 Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me 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 110 464 Index of First Lines page 464 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 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 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 not understand, 122 When the trains come into strange cities 41 When they number their blocks they mean business 158 Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me When you break a line nothing When you had finished a poem what did it want you to with it? While the heart twists Whispers— Who pays attention to the music the stone makes Wind, window, moon Wit is the only barrier between ourselves and them “With two yoke of oxen and one yellow dog, with one page 465 160 138 16 259 326 148 418 422 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 It is to be assumed that I not exist while most people in the vision assume that I exist 237 Index of First Lines 465 This page intentionally left blank Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 472 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) ... My Vocabulary Did This to Me page i my vocabulary did this to me Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me wesleyan poetry page ii Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page iii my vocabulary did this. .. last words were My vocabulary did this to me. ” * xviii Introduction Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page xix There is a contradiction between the life and the legend of Jack Spicer, the work... is a member of the Green Press Initiative The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page v CONTENTS Acknowledgments