Jack Spicer
Jack Spicer was a significant California poet known for his innovative contributions to 20th-century poetry, particularly within the San Francisco literary scene. He studied at the University of Redlands and later at the University of California, Berkeley, where he developed key friendships with fellow poets and became part of the "Berkeley renaissance." Spicer's early works incorporated imagery from games like chess and baseball and he became a local figure in poetry readings at venues like the Six Gallery, where the Beat generation began to take shape. His style evolved to include "serial poetry," characterized by continuous themes and influences from other poets, particularly through works such as *After Lorca* and *The Heads of the Town up to the Aether*, which explore complex themes of love, language, and existential inquiry.
Spicer was known for his unconventional approach to poetry, often employing automatic writing and advocating a poetic practice that allowed for external influences to shape the creative process. His later works, while reflective of a decline in innovation, still engaged with profound themes and demonstrated a unique dialectic between the self and the outside world. Although he gained wider recognition posthumously through *The Collected Books of Jack Spicer*, his work has often been overlooked in mainstream literary scholarship. Nevertheless, his influence extends to various poets who participated in his creative workshops, marking him as a pivotal figure in the evolution of contemporary poetry.
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Jack Spicer
American poet
- Born: January 30, 1925
- Birthplace: Los Angeles, California
- Died: August 17, 1965
- Place of death: San Francisco, California
Identity: Gay or bisexual
Biography
California poet Jack Spicer attended the University of Redlands from 1943 to 1944, transferring to the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned his B.A. in 1947. His first poems appeared in The Occident (1946) and Contour 1 (1947), in which he introduced his oft-repeated imagery of chess, cards, baseball, and other games. While earning his M.A., which he received in 1950, he formed important friendships with fellow poets Robert Duncan and Robin Blaser, whom Spicer dubbed the core of the “Berkeley renaissance,” each poet contributing much to the others’ subsequent poetic careers. At Berkeley, Spicer studied linguistics and poetic history, contributing to the Linguistic Atlas of the Pacific Coast from 1958 to his death. His linguistic studies led to many other scholarly works and influenced his poetic doctrine that the meanings of words are arbitrary and changeable.
From 1940 to 1950 Spicer also worked as a radio announcer for KPFA in San Francisco. His work there provided the imagery for Billy the Kid, considered an allegory on death and homosexuality representing Spicer’s early interest in writing imaginary elegies. His refusal to sign a loyalty oath at Berkeley effectively ended Spicer’s mainstream academic career. Dividing his life between academic studies and poetic concerns, he became a local poet in bars and helped form the historic Six Gallery. This small art gallery hosted poetry readings and would become the setting for the launch of the Beat generation, of which Spicer was a marginal member, although he later became the leader of the “anti-Beat” poets in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In 1957, a pivotal year for Spicer, his poems appeared in the important Evergreen Review. He formed the influential “Magic Workshop” teaching sessions in San Francisco, and he prompted poet and publisher Joe Dunn to establish the White Rabbit Press, a small press that became noted for its publication of works by Spicer and others in his circle. In 1958 Spicer briefly took over as editor of the press. After his death, it would evolve into a major printing house, Black Sparrow Press.
Spicer wrote prolifically over the next several years, employing a difficult and discontinuous style. His books frequently were in epistle form, with titles that indicated the thematic content. Beginning with After Lorca, Spicer wrote what he called “serial poetry,” which included translations and fake translations of the work of Federico García Lorca and other past poets. The “Fake Biography of Arthur Rimbaud” appears in The Heads of the Town up to the Aether. Regarded as his most important work, this book is often compared to Dante’s Inferno (c. 1320). Spicer claimed that, in this three-part descent into the underworld, each poem was a ghost speaking to other ghosts, living and dead. This work was an important turning point for Spicer, who began using poetic dictation or “automatic writing,” influenced by poets William Blake, William Butler Yeats, and friend Robert Duncan. Spicer’s gnostic religious beliefs and independent poetic philosophy also helped shape the poems that he claimed were mysterious codes or messages received from an outside force. In lectures addressed to other poets, Spicer advocated that, instead of exerting control as authors, they allow alien and ghostlike languages to enter them.
Admonitions, written in 1958 but not published until 1974, is a book on music. Its poems act as mirrors reflecting personal allusions in what Spicer called “false connections.” Throughout his career, his themes often focused on love and the dialectic between language or poetry and experience, exploring the relationship between the self and the outside world in surreal forms and imagery. Fifteen False Propositions About God reflects Spicer’s Calvinist debate with “big huge loneness,” a God that he felt was an absolute gamemaker detached from human life. Book of Magazine Verse shows a decline in Spicer’s powers; for example, he attacks T. S. Eliot, as he had done in earlier works, but here he uses techniques that are no longer innovative.
During the late 1960’s, Spicer published frequently in Open Space, a Bay-Area magazine published by White Rabbit. During his lifetime, Spicer was well known only in his home region. After alcoholism led to his death, he gained a larger audience through The Collected Books of Jack Spicer, published posthumously by his friend Robin Blaser. Spicer is regarded as an important influence on poets Richard Brautigan, Lew Welch, Michael McClure, and Bob Kaufman, who were students in Spicer’s “Magic Workshops.” Poet Thomas Parkinson published Homage to Jack Spicer, and Other Poems in 1970, and in 1974 Robert Duncan published “An Ode and Arcadia,” a poem cowritten with Spicer. Still, Spicer has been largely ignored by mainstream scholars and is rarely anthologized.
Bibliography
Duncan, Robert. Preface to One-Night Stand, and Other Poems, by Jack Spicer. San Francisco: Grey Fox Press, 1980. In his lengthy preface, Duncan discusses his relationship with Spicer, points to Spicer’s poetic influences, and analyzes his poetic career. In a note to this volume, the poet and editor Donald Allen surveys Spicer’s poetic theory, technique, and publishing history.
Ellingham, Lewis. Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for Wesleyan University Press, 1998. Describes how Spicer spent most of his time disdaining the publishing world and making enemies. This portrait depicts a brilliant, difficult, and largely unlikable man whose talent for writing equaled his inability to function in the world.
Foster, Edward Halsey. Jack Spicer. Boise, Idaho: Boise State University Press, 1991. A short critical biography juxtaposing Spicer with poets in the Walt Whitman tradition.
Herndon, James. Everything as Expected. San Francisco: Author, 1973. Published by a friend of his, this short personal reminiscence of Spicer includes some photographs by Isadore Klein.
Johnston, Alastair. A Bibliography of the White Rabbit Press. Berkeley, Calif.: Poltroon Press in association with Anacapa Books, 1985. Gives the history of Bay Area publishing and discusses Spicer’s contributions to publishing history.
Spicer, Jack. The Collected Books of Jack Spicer. Edited by Robin Blaser. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow, 1975. Blaser’s commentary provides valuable insights.