The Collected Books of Jack Spicer [Paperback]

Jack Spicer (Author), Robin Blaser (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 087685241X | ISBN-13: 978-0876852415 | Publication Date: July 1975 | Edition: First Edition

w/Blaser's essay "The Practice of Outside"

Editorial Reviews

Review

1st Sf Home Rainout Since. Bounce Tabby-cat Giants.
Afternoon
Alba
Apollo Sends Seven Nursery Rhymes To James Alexander
Aquatic Park
Army Beach With Trumpets
Awkward Bridge
Bacchus
The Ballad Of Escape
Ballad Of Sleeping Somewhere Else
Ballad Of The Dead Boy
The Ballad Of The Dead Woodcutter
Ballad Of The Little Girl Who Invented The Universe
Ballad Of The Seven Passages
Ballad Of The Shadowy Pigeons
Ballad Of The Terrible Presence
The Ballad Of Weeping
Baseball Predictions, April 1, 1964
Billy The Kid
The Birds
The Birth Of Venus
Blood
The Book Of Galahad
The Book Of Gawain
The Book Of Gwenivere
The Book Of Lancelot
The Book Of Merlin
A Book Of Music
The Book Of Percival
Booth Tarkington
Buster Keaton Rides Again: A Sequel
Buster Keaton's Ride
Cantata
Car Song
The Cardplayers
Concord Hymn
Conspiracy
The Country Is Not Very Well Defined.
Crabs
Dash
Debussy
A Diamond
Dillinger
Dover Beach
Drugs
Duet For A Chait And A Table
Elegy
Ferlinghetti
Fifteen False Propositions Against God
Finally The Messages Penetrate
For Billy
For Dick
For Ebbe
For Ed
For Hal
For Harvey
For Jack
For Jerry
For Joe
For Judson
For Mac
For Nemmie
For Robert
For Russ
For Willie
Fort Wayne
Four Poems For Ramparts
Four Poems For The St. Louis Sporting News: 1
Four Poems For The St. Louis Sporting News: 2
Four Poems For The St. Louis Sporting News: 3
Four Poems For The St. Louis Sporting News: 4
Friday, The 13th
Frog
Ghost Song
Good Friday: For Lack Of An Orchestra
Graphemics
He Died At Sunrise
Heroes Eat Soup Like Anyone Else.
Hisperica Farmina
I Hear A Banging On The Door Of The Night
I Squint My Eyes To Cry
Ii For The Princess
Improvisations On A Sentence By Poe
It Comes May And The Summers Renew Themselves
It Is Forbidden To Look
Juan Ramon Jimenez
Lament For The Makers
The Little Halfwit
The Log In The Fire
Love
Love 8
Love Ii
Love Iii
Love Iv
Love Poems
Love V
Love Vi
Love Vii
Magic
The Man In The Wall
The Metallurgical Analysis Of The Stone That Was My Heart
The Moon And Lady Death
Morphemics
Mummer
Narcissus
Narcissus
Ode For Walt Whitman
Orfeo
Partington Ridge
Phonemics
A Poe- %m Ronnie Wrote The Other Evening
Postscript
Prayer For My Daughter
Radar
A Red Wheelbarrow
A Redwood Forest Is Not Invisible At Night.
Seven Poems For The Vancouver Festival
Several Years' Love
Sheep Trails Are Fateful To Strangers
Six Poems For Poetry Chicago
Smoke Signals
Song For September
Song Of A Prisoner
Song Of The Poor
Song Of Two Windows
Sporting Life
Suicide
Surrealism
Ten Poems For Downbeat
The Territory Is Not The Map
A Textbook Of Poetry
Thanatos, The Death-plant In The Skull
They Came To The Briers And The Briers Couldn't Find 'em
Three Poems For Tish
To Be Inscribed On A Painting
The Tragic Muse
Transformations I
Transformations Ii
Transformations Iii
Two Poems For The Nation
A Valentine
Venus
Verlaine
When You Go Away You Don't Come Home
Who Knew
The Whorship Of Beauty
Wrong Turn
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 382 pages
• Publisher: Black Sparrow Books; First Edition edition (July 1975)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 087685241X
• ISBN-13: 978-0876852415
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,923,470 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the great books of the 20th century, June 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Collected Books of Jack Spicer (Paperback)

When Jack Spicer died in August, 1965, he was known only to initiates of the new American poetry. Since then, his reputation has grown posthumously in a fashion unequaled since Dickinson. This is the book on which this reputation rests, one of the most searing and terrifying (and beautiful) collections ever written in English.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Heads Of the Town Up to the Aether" may be the best SF poem, April 13, 2004

By 

Rob Wilson (Santa Cruz and Honolulu) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Collected Books of Jack Spicer (Paperback)

ever written or collaged or dictated into existence even if the "imperial city"/ "civitas dei" could not recognize itself in these antilyrical and mock Spicerian deformations and post-Beat revelations into the "afterlife" ghosts and Logos/lowghosts and proud slums of 1960. If this is not US poetry equal to the severe decreations of Wallace Stevens in "The Rock," then I do not know what poesy is nor SF might be as imagined into a city of imagination, vision, and mongrel community.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In everything., October 30, 2008

By 

Tim Lavenz (Iowa City, IA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Collected Books of Jack Spicer (Paperback)

Art is fun. Ghosts are all around making poetry with us. Is his I there? Maybe that is the trail he is sending us on. There is a great deal of hell in everything. Somehow, THAT is made beautiful. Love and hate have no place in poetry. Contradict oneself. Are you?

"Textbook of Poetry" and "Fifteen False Propositions Against God" are the stellar poems here, but each page is full of voice. No poet has inspired me as Spicer has. I am continually returning to him.

November 30th, 2008: a complete collection of Spicer's poems is coming out through Wesleyan titled, "My Vocabulary Did This To Me." If you are thinking about purchasing this volume (which is out of print now (hence the high price)), I would wait for that one and get it. I know that Peter Gizzi (who also collected Spicer's Vancouver lectures in a volume, "The House That Jack Built") has spearheaded this project, and I think we can expect something magnificent. Do not miss Spicer's poetry.