Book description
In 1965, when the poet Jack Spicer died at the age of forty, he left
behind a trunkful of papers and manuscripts and a few copies of the
seven small books he had seen to press. A West Coast poet, his influence
spanned the national literary scene of the 1950s and '60s, though in
many ways Spicer's innovative writing ran counter to that of his
contemporaries in the New York School and the West Coast Beat movement.
Now, more than forty years later, Spicer's voice is more compelling,
insistent, and timely than ever. During his short but prolific life,
Spicer troubled the concepts of translation, voice, and the act of
poetic composition itself. My Vocabulary Did This to Me is a landmark
publication of this essential poet's life work, and includes poems that
have become increasingly hard to find and many published here for the
first time. "As a measure of our historical distance from
Spicer's personality, a new generation of editors, the poets Peter Gizzi
and Kevin Killian, moves beyond the Spicer 'legend' in order to present
the full range of his poetry to readers both familiar and unfamiliar
with his work."--Zach Finch, Boston Review JACK SPICER
(1925-1965) published books including After Lorca (1957), Billy the Kid
(1959), and The Holy Grail (1962). PETER GIZZI is a poet and author of
numerous books, including The Outernationale (2007), who lives in
Holyoke, Massachusetts. KEVIN KILLIAN is a poet, novelist, critic, and
playwright living in San Francisco.
