The Clerk's Tale: Poems (Paperback)

~ (Author), Laureate Louise Gluck (Introduction) "Promise me you will not forget Portofino..." (more)
Key Phrases: Maria Rizzatti, Miss Grace

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

"Inside everything was Episcopalian— / the wicker chaise lounges, the small spotted mirrors, / the rattan dining room set, the tears." Reece's evocation of a family house on Cape Cod, eventually sold, exemplifies the twin currents of detached humor and sorrow that run through his début collection. The most effective poems here are autobiographical, recording early family life; a period spent recovering from a nervous breakdown in hospitals and borrowed houses ("My legacy is to leave the room empty"); and a new life in retail—hence the title. Reece's poems are saved from solipsism by a keen alertness to the characters around him and to the consolations of the natural world. Animals please him, because they are happier than people—"The ponies said: This day astounds us. The field is green." And resignation brings with it a kind of peace, as in a poem written on the poet's birthday in a lonely Florida town: "It is not Paris it is not Florence / but it has majesty in its anonymity."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

From Booklist

Supple, atmospheric, and lucent, Reece's entrancing lyrics evoke the diametrically opposed yet equally affecting landscapes of Minnesota and Florida and consider the axis between solitude and connection, peace and pain, philosophy and madness. Reece's poems are at once splendidly fresh and deeply rooted in poetry's rich loam as he offers a witty yet moving variation on Chaucer's The Clerk's Tale and echoes the work of Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens, and James Merrill. No academic, Reece is a longtime Brooks Brothers employee, and, accordingly, the title poem, originally published in the New Yorker, portrays two men, including an aging homosexual, who clerk in an upscale men's clothier in the Mall of America, an edifice Reece compares to a Gothic cathedral. Indeed, religious images surface often as the poet summons up childhood memories and evokes resonant vignettes, still lives, and today's cluttered versions of pastorals, subtly tracing the soul's uncertain progress from brute survival to transcendent receptivity and affirmation. Insightfully introduced by poet laureate Louise Gluck, Reece's striking debut yields new revelations with each reading. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (April 4, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618422544
• ISBN-13: 978-0618422548
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #120,500 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Luminous, June 2, 2004

By A Customer

Spencer Reece has achieved a rarity in first poetry books--a collection that displays the voice of maturity and the guileless wonder of youth. The Clerk's Tale concerns itself with no less than the journey of the soul. Many of the "tales" are taken from Reece's life and detail the loss of his home and possessions, his time spent in a psychiatric ward, and his gradual recovery and the reclamation of his life. Though these beautifully rendered pieces are heartbreaking in their forthrightness and honesty, they never wallow in self-pity or lapse into solipsism; instead they ultimately reaffirm the necessity of accepting darkness and difficulty as part and parcel of a fully realized life. I highly recommend this collection.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exquisite, August 7, 2008

By	Denise Lanier "Words are breath and blood" (Hollywood Beach, Florida United States) - See all my reviews

One of the best books of poetry I've ever read. No doubt. Reece has a unique ear for the way people talk, the real conversation underneath the surface of dialogue. His seeing and hearing are perhaps (and arguably) one of the more nuanced in contemporary poetry today, in that--like any great photographer--he manages to conjure the magic of making us, the readers and "viewers," forget that he is the medium by which we are bearing witness. Furthermore, in the way of talented cinematographers, Reece is able to convey his characters' interior lives with minimal dialog because of his flourish for authentic and evocative exterior particulars. Robert Pinsky said, "Poetry, art of the human voice, helps turn us toward what we should or must not ignore. Speaking as they can across barriers actual and figurative, translated into our American tongue, these voices in confinement implicitly call us to our principles and to our humanity. They deserve, above all, not admiration or belief or sympathy--but attention. Attention to them is urgent for us." This is what I believe Spencer Reece does, and does exquisitely. Wendell Barry tells us in his poem "How to be a Poet," that "... You must depend upon affection... Breathe with unconditional breath... Communicate slowly... There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places." Few writers speak better to those ideals right now than Spencer Reece--though I will admit to a major bias. (Spencer--if you're reading this--please know, I don't think I've ever been more grateful for a book of poems. Truly. Will you be my poetry mentor? Peace, friend.)

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Minnesota, Florida, Silence, July 10, 2006

By	Erin S. Moses - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Reece takes his reader's around the US and brings them back to themselves. For the first time, for me at least, one sees the irony of the beauty of the outside of a hospital and then the agony within.

One travels from the busy streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, to the quiet back waters of Florida. Reece shows a great desire of silence, for solitude. When a days work is done he goes home and shuts himself in a room, left with nothing but silence and his thoughts.

A reflextion on life and what is all the hurry about.