Friday, 12 April 2013

My Vocabulary Did This to Me: Collected Poems of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan UP, 2008), second selection

from A Birthday Poem for Jim (and James) Alexander (1959):


I can't describe good
But once tried to in a poem about a starfish
Or your watery eyes
Seeing nothing but what they told you.

*

Poetry seeks occasion. In a man's life
There is May, June, December, birthdays, nothing else really matters.
(I don't understand why I omitted October. Poetry seeks occasions.
        In a man's life
There are birthdays.)

*

You have hours
There are 
To use them. Choose your
Cake.


from within the same collection, a couple passages from "Imaginary Elegies V":


Another wrong turning
Another five years.

*

                                                     But the birds are real
     not only in feeding. I think
Their wings. Glittering in the black ab / sense. 


from Helen: A Revision (1960):


Nothing is known about Helen but her voice
Strange glittering sparks
Lighting no fires but what is reechoed
Rechorded, set on the icy sea.


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