Jack Spicer, unlike his contemporaries Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Gary Snyder, was a poet who disdained publishing and relished his role as a social outcast. He died in 1965 virtually unrecognized, yet in the following years his work and thought have attracted and intrigued an international audience. Now this comprehensive biography gives a pivotal poet his due. Based on interviews with scores of Spicer's contemporaries, Poet Be Like God details the most intimate aspects of Spicer's life - his family, his friends, his lover - illuminating not only the man but also many of his poems. The resultant narrative of the San Francisco Renaissance and the emergence of the North Beach gay scene during the 50s and 60s will be indispensable reading for students of American literature and gay studies.
| User ratings| 5 stars | | | 4 stars | | | 3 stars | | | 2 stars | | | 1 star | |
|
ReviewsEditorial Review - Kirkus Reviews Copyright (c) VNU Business Media, Inc.
Beat insider Ellingham and novelist Killian (Shy, 1989, etc.) have here embraced a most resistant, though not unworthy, subject in poet Jack Spicer. Spicer catalyzed the development of the Beat Generation in 1950s San Francisco. Though few literary tales have been told more often (or more tediously) than those pertaining to the Beats, Spicer's own has been at best ill served, and at worst wholly ...
More ignored, by the prevailing mythologies of the time. The authors have thus been admirably careful to keep their focus on the enigmatic Spicer, whose life and verse grew progressively more estranged, indeed bitterly so, from those of his more visible peers. In following Spicer's California odyssey--ending brutally in San Francisco, where he died from alcohol-induced liver failure in 1965, aged 40--Ellingham and Killian tread too lightly on their subject's more troublesome personality traits, e.g., his entrenched anti-Semitism and boorish bad will toward those poets daring enough to court his approval This largesse would rankle less, however, had they not chosen to extend it to the poetry itself, which, while capable of startling effects and moving lyricism, frequently succumbs to the same narcissistic bloat that long ago rendered the Beat temperament clichƒ. Instead, the authors have provided, albeit in impressive detail, a cosmology of poetic egotism, with Spicer's now the origin. Ultimately, Spicer's legacy, like that of any devalued artist, must endure the trial of rigorous critical appraisal. Despite the current academic fashion, literary resurrections of this sort cannot be taken on faith, but rather require a proof that the authors, true believers both, fail to supply in this otherwise well-researched and readable biography.
Less Related books | by Jack Spicer, Peter Gizzi
Limited preview - 1998
| |
 | by Michael Davidson
Limited preview - 1991
| |
References from web pagesMoreJacket # 7 - Kevin Killian and Lewis Ellingham - Excerpt from ...
This excerpt is reproduced with permission from Poet Be Like God - Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance, by Kevin Killian and Lewis Ellingham, ...
jacketmagazine.com/ 07/ spicer-poetbe.html Jim Van Buskirk
Review of Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance by Lewis Ellingham and Kevin Killian. Reviewed by Jim Van Buskirk ...
jimvanbuskirk.com/ poet.html Jack Spicer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lew Ellingham and Kevin Killian, Poet, Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1998 ...
en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Jack_Spicer Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More - Jack Spicer
Further Reading. Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance, by Lew Ellingham and Kevin Killian, 1998 ...
www.poets.org/ jspic/ The House That Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer ...
Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance. Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1998. 461 pp. $35.00. Jack Spicer is the only post-World War II ...
www.questia.com/ PM.qst?a=o& se=gglsc& d=5001829197 American Poetry Review, The: House That Jack Built: Preface to the ...
bnet. findarticles > American Poetry Review, The > Jan/Feb 1998 > Article > Print friendly. House That Jack Built: Preface to the collected lectures of Jack ...
findarticles.com/ p/ articles/ mi_qa3692/ is_199801/ ai_n8785669/ print On Jack Spicer
First I should credit the two pieces. Jack Spicer, Poet appeared as the inaugural chapbook in the “Poetry psa” from THE NAMELESS, the publishing imprint of ...
www.octopusmagazine.com/ issue04/ html/ features/ essays/ on_jack_spicer.htm LISTSERV 15.5 - POETICS Archives
View:. Next Message | Previous Message Next in Topic | Previous in Topic Next by Same Author | Previous by Same Author Chronologically | Most Recent First ...
listserv.buffalo.edu/ cgi-bin/ wa?A2=ind0208& L=poetics& T=0& F=& S=& P=296942 Less Places mentioned in this book Maps KML
 | 1650 California Street - Page 2488 Jack and Ronnie shared Jack's basement flat in the apartment building at 1650 California Street, near the Bank of America branch at Van Ness and ... |
| Berkeley - Page 17The excitement of the expansive writing scene of Berkeley in the late forties found its apogee in the Berkeley Writers' Conference, which still seems ...more pages: 63 369 |
| Lorca - Page 106After Lorca gives perspective and body to the previous work; when Spicer is measured on Spicer what lookd grotesque before takes on lineaments of ...more pages: 127 148 |
More | Oakland - Page 18who gave readings and spoke from their own experience in writing and publishing, such as the British novelist Timothy Pember, who lived in Oakland. ...more pages: 37 46 |
| San Francisco - Page 69Thanks to this constellation of writers, Boston was able to compete with New York and San Francisco as a center of postmodern poetics. ...more pages: 153 211 |
| Vancouver - Page 344.arold Dull met Jack's plane on his return from Vancouver and was struck by how tall Jack seemed, as though Vancouver had released some of the care he ...more pages: 317 371 |
| Los Angeles - Page 4In the evenings, after his homework, he would sit with his family and listen to the radio as night deepened over Los Angeles. ...more pages: 252 300 |
| Bolinas, California - Page 403Ron Loewinsohn, interviewed by Lewis Ellingham, 1982; this interview preceded Richard Brautigan's suicide in the autumn of 1984 in Bolinas, California ... |
| Boston - Page 69Thanks to this constellation of writers, Boston was able to compete with New York and San Francisco as a center of postmodern poetics. ...more pages: 49 180 |
| Minneapolis - Page 36Spicer in Minneapolis, lonely and a long way from home. Photo courtesy of Gary Bottone.more pages: 34 418 |
| Fort Wayne - Page 160Spicer sent Jim a package to Fort Wayne, a copy of his new sequence, The Red Wheelbarrow, in tribute. Later he recalled the result in the wistful ...more pages: 157 159 |
| Burnaby, BC - Page 412See John Granger, The Idea of the Alien in Jack Spicer's Dictated Books (unpublished Master of Arts thesis, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, ...more pages: 384 385 |
| New York - Page 69Thanks to this constellation of writers, Boston was able to compete with New York and San Francisco as a center of postmodern poetics. ...more pages: 63 217 |
| San Diego - Page 392"Joanne Kyger Papers (MSS 8), Archive for New Poetry, Mandeville Department of Special Collections, University of California, San Diego; Richard H. ...more pages: xviii |
| Seattle - Page 242Duncan Will read his poems in Seattle. Money (I forgot the story but the little boy after it all was over came up to Shoeless Joe Jackson) Say it ...more pages: 109 |
| Palo Alto - Page 293At one point he became confused, down there [Stanford in Palo Alto] on campus and wondered what he was doing there, kind of lost touch with himself ...more pages: 287 296 |
| Salt Lake City - Page 82George Stanley, for example, had intermittently written poetry during his first college year in Salt Lake City and later, in the army, as an enlisted ...more pages: 222 |
| Philadelphia - Page 118Born in Bucks County and newly arrived from Philadelphia, he wanted to become a painter. In fact, he wanted everything — the consolations of Roman ...more pages: 133 |
| Santa Barbara - Page 100TM Just too late to attend the "Magic Workshop," Joanne Kyger and her childhood friend Emily ("Nemi") Frost came from Santa Barbara to San Francisco. ...more pages: 254 |
| Annapolis - Page 160The first year Dora taught in a one-room schoolhouse, and Harold drove a school bus in the tiny settlement of Annapolis. ...more pages: 161 174 |
| Santa Monica - Page 390It's tempting to see this seaside floating seminar as Spicer's attempt to recreate the postwar Santa Monica beach scene of Christopher Isherwood and ... |
| New Orleans - Page 396The "anonymous admirer in New Orleans" mentioned by Duncan was in fact a woman, the poet Kay Johnson, whom Spicer later that year published in his ...more pages: 162 199 |
| Daly City - Page 299 |
| Prague - Page 345Allen Ginsberg — fresh from being crowned "Kraj Majales" ("King of the May") by the cheering students of Prague — was poised for an enormous sensation ...more pages: 355 |
| Denver - Page 270Russell and Dora went to Denver, to his mother, who had promised him an inheritance once he married. "When he, in fact, showed up with me, ...more pages: 132 |
| Buffalo - Page 389State University of New York, Buffalo, and incorporated some of the material into a slide presentation she gave at "In Recovery of the Public World," ... |
| Milwaukee - Page 140A young man from Milwaukee, newly arrived in the Bay Area, Anderson was a graduate student at Berkeley in 1958 and joined its literary magazine ... |
| York - Page 63lew York let Spicer down. No, it appalled him. "I hate this town," he wrote a month after his arrival. "No sense of abandon here. ...more pages: 398 |
| Gardiner, Maine - Page 379 |
| Bakersfield - Page 48At Bakersfield, the men were transferred to a Santa Fe bus which took them into LA's Union Station, where they were met by organizers who transported ...more pages: 11 362 |
| Redlands - Page 11Duncan's example led the more timid Spicer to explore his own sexuality in ways he'd never dreamed of at Redlands. ...more pages: 8 21 |
| Monterey, California - Page 384 |
| Guatemala - Page 40512 August 1959, written from Guatemala after a visit to San Francisco: T had a chance to play it [tape of Olson reading] for Jack Spicer, whom I like, ...more pages: 238 |
| Venice, California - Page 2841" Another letter came from the poet and lecturer Lawrence Lipton, who wrote from Venice, California, describing his plans for a UCLA class in "West ...more pages: 147 |
| Pasadena - Page 52Hedrick and Ryan were part of a large contingent of artists from Pasadena who had congregated around Pasadena Junior College, and were now using GI ...more pages: 56 |
| Springfield, Missouri - Page xvWe could not have completed the book without the cooperation of Spicer's brother, Holt V Spicer, of Springfield, Missouri; Robin Blaser and the late ...more pages: 365 |
| Toronto - Page 319Both groups suffered in the shadow of the East: poets, even experimental poets of the large urban centers of Toronto and Montreal had the same ...more pages: 342 |
| Chicago - Page 60Helen Adam was very different from her friend Ida Hodes, a worldly, energetic woman who had come from Chicago via Big Sur and the Henry Miller crowd ...more pages: 171 |
| Washington, DC - Page 13Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, DC in December of 1946.50 There was a group of poets around George Leite, who owned the bookstore Daliel's and ...more pages: 85 |
| Binghamton - Page 299
more pages: 298 |
| Hoboken, NJ - Page 393In 1994 Zasterle Books (Tenerife, Canary Islands) published Chapter 3 as "The Train of Thought," and later the same year Talisman House (Hoboken, NJ. ... |
| Detroit - Page 345From Detroit a band of young poets approached the Berkeley Conference in the hope of meeting their own personal heroes. ... |
| Albuquerque - Page 307In early 1964 Loewinsohn left San Francisco on a four-month tour with his wife, Joan, and his travels brought him to Albuquerque, where he met with ...more pages: 268 |
| Venice - Page 149"u Boyd was a frequent visitor to the Bay Area, but his home was in Venice, the oceanside district of Los Angeles. |
| Swampscott, Massachusetts - Page 165Impressed by Duncan's dedication to Eigner's work, Spicer got his address from Don Allen and wrote to Swampscott, Massachusetts, to ask for poems for ... |
| Brooklyn - Page 298
more pages: 299 |
| Montreal - Page 319Both groups suffered in the shadow of the East: poets, even experimental poets of the large urban centers of Toronto and Montreal had the same ... |
| San Jose - Page 198but the joke was that the dancer turned out to be married, with a family, in San Jose.48 In the face of his long-standing contempt for emcee Rexroth, ... |
| St. Louis - Page xviiiOlin Library, Washington University in St. Louis; James Van Buskirk, Director, Gay and Lesbian Center, San Francisco Main Library. ... |
| Beverly Hills - Page 48Spicer and Wixman were driven to Laurel Canyon, near Beverly Hills, to a secluded cottage offered by a pair of sympathetic young men who worked in the ... |
| San Bernardino - Page 8Redlands, in San Bernardino, was smack in the middle of the citrus belt of central California — the lemons that haunt Spicer's mature poetry grew ... |
| Greenwich - Page 145The Dharma Committee sometimes met at the Bread and Wine Mission, on the southwest corner of Grant and Greenwich, for the free spaghetti dinners, ... |
| Paris - Page 75Robin had known the men and women 'connected with the Poets' Theater there, and in a later trip to Paris had been shown the town by John Ashbery. ... |
| Chandler - Page 319At night he would take a bottle of brandy to his room, and curl up with Chandler or Macdonald. "We'd been warned, of course, that he could be a ... |
| Paterson, New Jersey - Page 275The venerable sage of Paterson, New Jersey, had agreed to write an introduction to Ginsberg's book of early poems, Empty Mirror, and Ginsberg had ... |
| Reno - Page 60Adam had taken a series of odd jobs (including, or so she claimed, a stint at a heroin factory in Reno) and came to roost in the Bay Area around 1950. ... |
| San Antonio - Page 268 |
| Mexico City - Page 377Mandorla 1, published in Mexico City, featured three poems ("Orfeo," "La can- cion de un prisionero," and "Guerrea en la jungla") from Spicer's A Book ... |
| Cambridge - Page 70As it happened, Frank O'Hara was spending the spring semester in Cambridge, working with the Poets' Theater on a Rockefeller Fellowship. l" John ...more pages: 68 |
| Princeton - Page 33For Spicer there was no Princeton waiting with open doors.87 Refusal to sign the oath was widely considered a noble form of professional suicide — a ... |
| Billings, Montana - Page 35Mary was twenty-two years old, from Billings, Montana; she fell deeply in love with him. They moved into a pair of twin studios in a boarding house on ... |
| Knoxville, Tennessee - Page 221for two Tonics open two of its books, those of Gawain and Lancelot.2 The first "Tony" is Tony Sherrod, of Knoxville, Tennessee, and the second is Tony ... |
| London - Page 276 |
| Milan - Page 237 |
| Calgary - Page 342I missed the Blaser-Persky reading at the New Design Gallery by one day, because in 1965 I was living in Calgary, and had just driven into Vancouver, ... |
| Cleveland - Page 291 |
| Worcester, Massachusetts - Page 67"For me the 'West' meant Worcester, Massachusetts!" Spicer was defensive about California but, Jim realized, in Boston you'd have to be. ... |
| Rome - Page 398York [also edited by Stanley] — and 8 was produced by Harold Dull (1961] in Rome (it must be quite a rarity!)" George Stanley to Lewis Ellingham, ... |
| Moscow - Page 93(The 1943 film Mission to Moscow had been the subject of much vitriol during congressional investigations into communist influence on Hollywood. ...more pages: 72 |
| Kathmandu - Page 414moved to New York in 1967, and in the seventies embarked on a spiritual quest to Nepal, where he is said to have died in Kathmandu. ... |
| Kyoto - Page 195Not only had Corman been close to Olson and Creeley; he had done much to promote the poetry of Louis Zukofsky, and in Kyoto the previous year had ... |
| Cairo - Page 249 |
| Jerusalem - Page 91Does it lead up, or does it lead down, To Jerusalem, or to Hecate's town? Though the torch of Heaven he can brandish well. And James Broughton adds, ... |
References to this bookFrom Google ScholarBrian M Reed, So much has happened since Margaret, End Page - 2006 - Contemporary Literature Translating Homosexuality into Visibility Robert H Abzug, Judith G Coffin, Neil R Nehring Popular passagesBut Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things : but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed : so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot ; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence. Page 170 This ocean, humiliating in its disguises Tougher than anything. No one listens to poetry. The ocean Does not mean to be listened to. A drop Or crash of water. It means Nothing. It Is bread and butter Pepper and salt. The death That young men hope for. Aimlessly It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. No One listens to poetry. Page 279 Yes" I cry, for dancing's my soul delight (Feet! feet!) "Come on!" Through the streets we skip like swallows. Howard malingers. (Come on, Howard.) Ashes malingers. (Come on, JA) Dick malingers. (Come on, Dick.) Alvin darts ahead. (Wait up, Alvin.) Jack, Earl and Someone don't come. Down the dark stairs drifts the steaming chacha-cha. Through the urine and smoke we charge to the floor. Wrapped in Ashes Page 64 Staley, director of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas... Page xvii And if at Mill Valley perched in the trees the sweet rain drifting through western air a white sweating bull of a poet told us our cunts are ugly — why didn't we admit we have thought so too? Page 125 ... is in erotic musings or in the truer imagination of a dream to invent a beautiful boy. How difficult to take a boy in a blue bathing suit that I have watched as casually as a tree and to make him visible in a poem as a tree is visible, not as an image or a picture but as something alive — caught forever in the structure of words. Live moons, live lemons, live boys in bathing suits. The poem is a collage of the real. Page 105 ... across language as easily as he can bring them across time. That tree you saw in Spain is a tree I could never have seen in California, that lemon has a different smell and a different taste, BUT the answer is this — every place and every time has a real object to correspond with your real object — that lemon may become this lemon, or it may even become this piece of seaweed, or this particular color of gray in this ocean. One does not need to imagine that lemon; one needs to discover it. Page 104 I knew they were gay the minute I laid eyes on them!" screams John. How ashamed they are of us! we hope. Page 64 LessContents | 34 | | | | | 63 | | | | | 78 | | | | | 118 | | | | | 140 | | | | | 180 | | | | | 220 | | | | | 246 | | | |
| 82 | | | | | 93 | | | | | 107 | | | | | 119 | | | | | 126 | | | | | 144 | | | | | 153 | | | | | 179 | | | |
More | 278 | | | | | 317 | | | | | 344 | | | | | 366 | | | | | 419 | | | | | 4 | | | | | 15 | | | | | 36 | | | | | 47 | | | | | 59 | | | |
| 194 | | | | | 212 | | | | | 233 | | | | | 247 | | | | | 270 | | | | Jack Spicer etching by Ariel | 308 | | | | Jack Spicer clowning around to amuse the kids | 331 | | | | Jack Spicer and Sister Mary Norbert Korte | 351 | | | | | | | | |
Less |
